Radeon HD 4830 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 36%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 1GB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one second. This 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.