Radeon HD 4830 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator 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 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be 121% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (more or less 172%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 117%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (117%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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