GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (approximately 22%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be a lot (approximately 26%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3328 (26%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.