GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

The Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (about 762%) more effective at 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

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (more or less 392%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.