GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 480 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (approximately 300%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (300%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (more or less 200%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (200%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 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 number of ROPs by the clock 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 rate also depends on quite a few 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.