GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular 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)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should be 82% faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a small bit (about 4%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a small bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (19%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.