Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 100% faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (more or less 418%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 187200 (418%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (about 625%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 5830, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80000 (625%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card 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 ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.