GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 is 30% faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 29504 (30%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (approximately 56%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (56%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (more or less 69%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.