GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (289%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be much (more or less 1144%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41200 (1144%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (approximately 611%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (611%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.