GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX is 22% faster than the Radeon HD 4730 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is quite a bit (approximately 93%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (93%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.