GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 is 11% faster than the Radeon HD 5830 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be just a bit (more or less 8%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3360 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is quite a bit (more or less 51%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 5830, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (51%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.