GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 is 5% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 52%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (about 50%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (50%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should 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, 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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