GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be just a bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7000 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (69%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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