GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs 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 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5920 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (about 32%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10808 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 5830, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11480 (90%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.