GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 83 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be much (about 102%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34400 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (183%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.