GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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 GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 18% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be much (approximately 44%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is quite a bit (about 63%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (63%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.