GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 24320 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a little bit (about 14%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5632 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1888 (15%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.