GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (about 315%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34000 (315%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (approximately 137%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (137%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.