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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 105984 MB/sec
Difference: 22016 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (about 259%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 55424 (259%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2176 (11%)

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

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GX2 Radeon HD 3850 X2
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 Apr 4, 2008
Code Name G92 RV670 PRO
Memory 512 MB (x2) 512 MB (x2)
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 668 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 1656 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 105984 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 21376 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 21376 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 65 nm 55 nm
Transistors 754 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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