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

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB comes with a core clock speed of 513 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 792 MHz. It also uses a 320-bit bus, and uses a 90 nm design. It is comprised of 96 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 20 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.