GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a core clock frequency of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (approximately 27%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11840 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16720 (155%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.