GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a small bit (about 19%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (69%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.