GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 is 82% faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a little bit (about 19%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (19%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.