Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which features core clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 4730 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 will be much (about 81%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (121%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.