GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5670, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 400(80x5) Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 136 Watts (223%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5670 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 395%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61300 (395%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 210%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5670, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13000 (210%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics 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 ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.