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

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB uses a 90 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 513 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 792 MHz on this model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 20 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with clock 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 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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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

The Radeon HD 5830, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, and very much so. (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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 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 by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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