Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 280 Watts (295%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 262400 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (about 766%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 140960 (766%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is superior to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43920 (477%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.