GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 119808 (208%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is quite a bit (approximately 128%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (128%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (265%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.