GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16192 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (more or less 75%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (approximately 84%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 5830, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10720 (84%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.