Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (about 172%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 117%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (117%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.