GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 975 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (77%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is a bit (more or less 8%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (48%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.