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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 575 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 102 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 317%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58400 (317%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (more or less 109%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (109%)

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

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Radeon HD 4830 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9800 GX2	Radeon HD 4830 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	Mar 2008	Oct 21, 2008
Code Name	G92	RV770 LE
Memory	512 MB (x2)	1024 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz (x2)	575 MHz
Memory Speed	2000 MHz (x2)	1800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	197 watts	95 watts
Bandwidth	128000 MB/sec	57600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	76800 Mtexels/sec	18400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	19200 Mpixels/sec	9200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	128 (x2)	640(128x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64 (x2)	32
Render Output Units	16 (x2)	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
Bus Width	256-bit (x2)	256-bit
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Transistors	754 million	956 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

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