GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has 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 features 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 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5830, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (about 115%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (115%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (approximately 23%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (23%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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