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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB comes with a GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 112 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (more or less 33%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (33%)

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

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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

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Radeon HD 5830

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9800 GT 1GB	Radeon HD 5830
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	July 2008	February 25, 2010
Code Name	G92a/b	Cypress LE
Memory	1024 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz	800 MHz
Memory Speed	1800 MHz	4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	105 watts	175 watts
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	33600 Mtexels/sec	44800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	9600 Mpixels/sec	12800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	112	1120(224x5)
Texture Mapping Units	56	56
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	65/55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	754 million	2154 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

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