Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (about 23%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (23%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14720 (115%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should 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 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 clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.