Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 4730 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be a little bit (approximately 12%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (79%)

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 moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.