GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (338%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (approximately 762%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39600 (762%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (more or less 392%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10200 (392%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.