GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The GeForce 8800 Ultra comes with a clock frequency of 612 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1080 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 90 nm design. It features 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. ATi has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8800 Ultra Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 5830 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 Ultra	Radeon HD 5830
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	May 2007	February 25, 2010
Code Name	G80	Cypress LE
Fab Process	90 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.1 x16
Memory	768 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	612 MHz	800 MHz
Shader Speed	1500 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1080 MHz	1000 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	1120(224x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	56
Render Output Units	24	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	384-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.2
Power (Max TDP)	171 watts	175 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	103680 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	39168 Mtexels/sec	44800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	14688 Mpixels/sec	12800 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.