Radeon HD 4730 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular 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

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 is quite a bit (approximately 22%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4830 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (64%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.