GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5830 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (more or less 75%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (approximately 84%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5830, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.