GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136000 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (more or less 54%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (54%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.