GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (64%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be quite a bit (approximately 57%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17232 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 192 (2%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.