GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 is 102% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 64640 (102%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (more or less 82%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20176 (82%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2540 (25%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.