GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator 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

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (about 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

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (approximately 243%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4730, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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