GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be quite a bit (more or less 61%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27328 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23264 (182%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.