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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 features clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB 190 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2 197 Watts
Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 124800 MB/sec
Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 92%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 40000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 36800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a small bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 16000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 3200 (20%)

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 4890 2GB

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.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GX2 Radeon HD 4890 2GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 Apr 2, 2009
Code Name G92 RV790 XT
Memory 512 MB (x2) 2048 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 3900 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts 190 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 124800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 40000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 16000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 40
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 55 nm
Transistors 754 million 959 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the 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 4890 2GB

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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