Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 575 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of 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 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be a lot (approximately 22%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4830 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.