GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a bit (more or less 13%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 will be much (approximately 42%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also capable of handling higher screen 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 in one second.

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