GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4730, which features a GPU core clock speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 57 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be 122% faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 243%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54400 (243%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (243%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write 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 the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.