GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is just a bit (more or less 19%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3400 (27%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.