GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be 88% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be a bit (more or less 17%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (33%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.