GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should be 233% faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general, because of its higher data rate. (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%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (about 191%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 230, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.