GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB should be much (approximately 171%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot (approximately 29%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (29%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.