Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a bit (more or less 12%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (56%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.