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GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB makes use of a 90 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 513 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 792 MHz on this card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 20 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 64640 (102%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (more or less 82%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20176 (82%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (about 25%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2540 (25%)

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

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GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB	Radeon HD 5830
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	Feb 2007	February 25, 2010
Code Name	G80	Cypress LE
Memory	320 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	513 MHz	800 MHz
Memory Speed	1584 MHz	4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	143 watts	175 watts
Bandwidth	63360 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	24624 Mtexels/sec	44800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10260 Mpixels/sec	12800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	96	1120(224x5)
Texture Mapping Units	48	56
Render Output Units	20	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	320-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	90 nm	40 nm
Transistors	681 million	2154 million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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