GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a bit (more or less 6%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 960 (8%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.