GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this 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)

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 theoretically be much better than 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 should be a small bit (approximately 16%) more effective at AF 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 running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 285 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.