Radeon HD 4830 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with 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 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be 10% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a lot (approximately 36%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (9%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.