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ATI Radeon HD 4730

ATI Radeon HD 4730: A Historical Overview and Relevance in 2025

Exploring whether this graphics card is suitable for modern tasks

Introduction

The ATI Radeon HD 4730 is a graphics card released in 2009, during a time when AMD (then still ATI) was competing for leadership in the budget segment. Despite its age, some enthusiasts still use it in older builds. In 2025, its relevancy is approaching zero, but it remains an interesting artifact for retro PC enthusiasts. This article will delve into its features, performance, and place in the modern market.

1. Architecture and Key Features

TeraScale 2 Architecture

The HD 4730 is built on the TeraScale 2 architecture (RV770CE) with a 55 nm manufacturing process. The chip includes 640 stream processors, 32 texture units, and 8 render backends. It is a cut-down version of the HD 4830, with a memory bus width reduced from 256 to 128 bits to lower costs.

Technologies of Its Time

The card supports DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3, allowing it to run late 2000s games on medium settings. However, modern features like ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX are absent. Among its "bonuses" is the CrossFireX technology for combining two cards, but in 2025, this is practically meaningless.

2. Memory: Modest Specs

GDDR5 and Limited Bandwidth

The HD 4730 is equipped with GDDR5 memory, available in either 512 MB or 1 GB (depending on the version) with a 128-bit bus. The memory bandwidth is 57.6 GB/s (at a memory clock of 900 MHz). For its time, this was sufficient for gaming at resolutions up to 1680×1050, but the narrow bus becomes a bottleneck at higher settings.

Why This Matters Today

In 2025, even 4 GB of video memory is the minimum for comfortable gaming. The 512 MB or 1 GB of the HD 4730 makes it unsuitable for modern projects. Even web browsers with heavy layouts can cause lags.

3. Gaming Performance: Nostalgia for the Past

Games from 2008–2010

- Crysis (2007): 25–35 FPS on medium settings at 1280×720.

- Left 4 Dead 2 (2009): 60+ FPS at 1680×1050.

- World of Warcraft (2008): 40–50 FPS on high settings.

Modern Projects

Running games from 2020 onward (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077 or Hogwarts Legacy) is impossible due to the lack of support for DirectX 12 Ultimate and limited power. Even indie games on the Unity engine in 2025 may require more resources.

Resolutions and Ray Tracing

The card is rated for 720p–1080p in older titles. Ray tracing is not supported—the technology emerged a decade after its release.

4. Professional Tasks: Not the Best Choice

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

The HD 4730 is poorly suited for editing in DaVinci Resolve or Blender. Opening complex scenes in Maya will cause stuttering. OpenCL 1.0 support is limited, and CUDA (NVIDIA) is absent. For rendering, it's better to use the integrated graphics of modern processors.

Scientific Computations

The card lacks specialized cores for ML/AI. Its computing power (about 480 GFLOPS) is hundreds of times lower than modern GPUs like the Radeon RX 7600 (up to 21 TFLOPS).

5. Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP and Power Supply Recommendations

The HD 4730 has a TDP of 80 W. A power supply of 400 W with a 6-pin PCIe connector is sufficient for a build using this card.

Cooling and Cases

The stock cooler manages cooling but may be noisy under load. The card is compact (~20 cm long), fitting well into small cases. However, by 2025, even budget cases have better cooling than those from 2009.

6. Comparison with Competitors

2009 Market

- NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT: The closest competitor. Advantages include a 256-bit memory bus and support for PhysX.

- AMD HD 5670: Newer but less powerful.

Modern Analogues

In 2025, the HD 4730 can be compared to the integrated graphics of the Ryzen 5 8600G (Radeon 760M). The latter outperforms it by 3–4 times and supports all modern APIs.

7. Practical Tips for Users in 2025

Power Supply

A 400 W power supply with an 80+ Bronze certification is sufficient. Example: EVGA 400 BR.

Compatibility

- Interface: PCIe 2.0 x16 (compatible with PCIe 3.0/4.0, but no speed boost).

- OS: Official drivers are available only up to Windows 7. There may be issues on Windows 10/11.

Drivers

Use modified drivers from the community (e.g., Amernime Zone) for partial support of newer operating systems.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- Low power consumption.

- Compact size.

- Support for older games and OS (XP, Vista).

Cons

- Outdated APIs (DirectX 10.1).

- Little video memory.

- Lack of support for modern technologies.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Consider the HD 4730?

This graphics card is a relic that may interest:

- Collectors and retro PC enthusiasts: For authentic builds from the 2000s.

- Owners of old systems: As a temporary solution for basic tasks (office work, video viewing).

Why Not to Buy It in 2025?

Even budget GPUs like the Intel Arc A380 (price: $120) offer 10 times the performance, support for DirectX 12, and HDMI 2.1. The HD 4730 is a choice for niche uses, not for everyday use.

Conclusion

The ATI Radeon HD 4730 symbolizes an era when 512 MB of memory was enough for gaming. In 2025, it falls short even against integrated solutions but retains the charm of "hardware" from the past. It’s worth buying only for nostalgic projects—in all other cases, it’s better to choose a modern alternative.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

June 2009

Model Name

Radeon HD 4730

Generation

Radeon R700

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

956 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

55 nm

Architecture

TeraScale

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

512MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

900MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

57.60 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

6.000 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

24.00 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

192.0 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

0.941 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

640

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

128KB

TDP

110W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.1

OpenGL

3.3

DirectX

10.1 (10_1)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

Shader Model

4.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

300W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

0.941 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

T400

1.072 +13.9%

NVS 810

1.037 +10.2%

Quadro 6000 SDI

1.007 +7%

Radeon Vega 6 Embedded

1.003 +6.6%

Radeon HD 4730

0.941