Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4830 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 1GB is a lot (approximately 72%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7712 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be a bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1488 (16%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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