GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (approximately 79%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19744 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a little bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 272 (2%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.