GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 5% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (approximately 50%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (50%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.