GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (169%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (approximately 409%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36000 (409%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the GeForce GT 230, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (191%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.