Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 5830 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136000 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (about 164%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (164%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (131%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.