GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4730, which features core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4730 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 119808 (208%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (about 88%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (500%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.