GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be a small bit (approximately 8%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3360 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is much (approximately 51%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5830, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (51%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.