GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, 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 will be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 5830 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be quite a bit (about 75%) more effective at 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

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (approximately 84%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5830, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.