Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which has GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (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%) more effective at 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 using 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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one 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 the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.