Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be much (about 123%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (123%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (257%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant 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.