GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 should be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 134144 (105%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be a lot (more or less 110%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84480 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16640 (87%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.