GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1120 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 Stream Processors, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 101376 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be a lot (more or less 110%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84480 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 4GB is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		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 maximum 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 card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.