GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4730, which features GPU clock speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is 234% faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 121%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27008 (121%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31456 (562%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.