Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a GPU core clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (about 33%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be just a bit (more or less 5%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5830, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 640 (5%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has 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 faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.