GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up 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 GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 should be 300% faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be a little bit (more or less 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 960 (8%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.