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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 has 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 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790 102400 MB/sec
Difference: 25600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (more or less 300%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790 19200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 57600 (300%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 100%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790 9600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 9600 (100%)

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

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4790

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 4790
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 2009
Code Name G92 RV790
Memory 512 MB (x2) 512 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 600 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 3200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 102400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 19200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 9600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 640(128x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 32
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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4790

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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