Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which features a clock speed of 575 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 will be much (about 22%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 512MB should be quite a bit (about 64%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (64%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.