GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16192 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (about 75%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10720 (84%)

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 transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.