GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 features a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM runs at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 GX2 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4870 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9800 GX2	Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Mar 2008	Jun 25, 2008
Code Name	G92	RV770 XT
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16
Memory	512 MB (x2)	1024 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz (x2)	750 MHz
Shader Speed	1500 MHz (x2)	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1000 MHz (x2)	900 MHz
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
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	197 watts	150 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	128000 MB/sec	115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate	76800 Mtexels/sec	30000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	19200 Mpixels/sec	12000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.