GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 97 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (more or less 202%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155200 (202%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 383%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (383%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface 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 higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.