Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with GPU core speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (approximately 23%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (about 115%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5830, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14720 (115%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.