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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 has a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It features 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2 197 Watts
Difference: 22 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 is 20% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be just a bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 3200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (about 67%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 12800 (67%)

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

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GX2 Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 March 2012
Code Name G92 Pitcairn XT
Memory 512 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 1280
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 80
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 28 nm
Transistors 754 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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