GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which has clock speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GTX should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be much (approximately 135%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is a bit (about 17%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (17%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.