GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be quite a bit better 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+ is much (about 57%) better at AF 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 running with a high resolution 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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.