GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB is a bit (approximately 16%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7040 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 285 2GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (62%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics card can possibly record 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.