GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 is 20% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a small bit (approximately 13%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (approximately 42%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (42%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.