GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (about 222%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99328 (222%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59264 (463%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.