GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ comes with a core clock speed of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 9800 GTX+ Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 3870 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9800 GTX+	Radeon HD 3870 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	July 2008	Nov 19, 2007
Code Name	G92b	RV670 XT
Fab Process	55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	738 MHz	775 MHz
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1100 MHz	1125 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	16
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	145 watts	106 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	72000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	12400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	12400 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past 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, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.