GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (more or less 1144%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.