GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 will be 82% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general, due to 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 should be just a bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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 should be a little bit (about 19%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.