GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 167% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (about 138%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (more or less 233%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (233%)

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 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. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.