Radeon HD 4830 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is much (more or less 172%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 117%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (117%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.