GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 575 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB is much (about 83%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB will be a bit (about 4%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.