Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs 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 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (approximately 98%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (98%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied 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. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.