GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is much (approximately 27%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 175%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (175%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.