Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 575 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a lot (about 43%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 187%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (187%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.