GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs 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 as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (approximately 70%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (more or less 94%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (94%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.