GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (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 quite a bit (approximately 138%) better at anisotropic 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 should be much (more or less 233%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and will be 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.