GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 470, which features a core clock speed of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 470 should be 65% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (65%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 is quite a bit (approximately 54%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41728 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 will be much (approximately 54%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10432 (54%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant 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 maximum fill rate.