GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (more or less 700%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (about 357%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 420, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (357%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.