GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (more or less 33%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (33%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.