GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5670, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 400(80x5) SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 136 Watts (223%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 100% quicker than the Radeon HD 5670 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (more or less 395%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61300 (395%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13000 (210%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.