GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (about 85%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 196%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (196%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.