GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 970 MHz on this model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.