GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a GPU core 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 made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be just a bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (69%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the 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 card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the 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 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.