GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (157%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 234% faster than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is quite a bit (approximately 169%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31008 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (about 303%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27856 (303%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.