GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should be 233% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be much (about 70%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (94%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.