GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running 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 be 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 is a small 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

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a little bit (about 15%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5830, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.