Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4730 should in theory perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be much (more or less 110%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11712 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (91%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.