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Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB has clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4730, which has GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 75 Watts
Radeon HD 4730 140 Watts
Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4730 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730 57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 52992 MB/sec
Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be much (more or less 110%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730 22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 11712 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730 5600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5088 (91%)

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

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Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4730

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3850 256MB Radeon HD 4730
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 Jun 8, 2009
Code Name RV670 PRO RV770/CE
Memory 256 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 668 MHz 700 MHz
Memory Speed 1656 MHz 3600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 75 watts 140 watts
Bandwidth 52992 MB/sec 57600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 10688 Mtexels/sec 22400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10688 Mpixels/sec 5600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) 640(128x5)
Texture Mapping Units 16 32
Render Output Units 16 8
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 55 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 956 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4730

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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