Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 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 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a bit (more or less 12%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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