Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4830 512MB should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 72%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7712 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 16%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1488 (16%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.