GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (338%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 1900% faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (more or less 762%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39600 (762%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (392%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must 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 AA, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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