This work presents a comprehensive theoretical comparison between absorption-based and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)-based atomic gradient sensing in a four-level tripod system. Both methods were evaluated under identical and optimized physical conditions to ensure a fair and unbiased comparison. The analysis demonstrates that EIT, driven by its steep dispersion response, consistently outperforms conventional absorption detection across a wide range of super-Gaussian beam profiles. Under optimal detuning, EIT achieved up to an order-of-magnitude enhancement in gradient sensitivity and maintained a twofold advantage even under identical detuning. Both approaches reached sub-diffraction spatial resolution in the range of 0.29lambda-0.40lambda, with EIT exhibiting sharper edge contrast and higher localization accuracy. These results confirm EIT as a fundamentally superior approach for precision atomic gradient sensing and sub-wavelength localization, offering clear guidance for the design of next-generation optical and quantum metrology systems.