Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 48384 (84%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be a little bit (approximately 16%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2976 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a lot (approximately 132%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12176 (132%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.