Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (approximately 79%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.