GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (approximately 248%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30800 (248%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be just a bit (more or less 15%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (15%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

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