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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB features a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It features 112 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 122% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (more or less 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (about 33%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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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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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

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