GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 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 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (more or less 138%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (138%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.