GeForce GTX 295 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 frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular 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)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 114 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 295, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 95776 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is much (more or less 106%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47360 (106%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be much (about 152%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19456 (152%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.