Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4730 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 is quite a bit (about 110%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11712 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (91%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.