GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (more or less 115%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (23%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.