GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (more or less 33%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (33%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.