GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 is 167% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot (approximately 64%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21440 (64%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17920 (187%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high 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 texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.