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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

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

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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

The Radeon HD 6870, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 52%) more effective at anisotropic 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 will be quite a bit (about 50%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

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 6870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 October 2010
Code Name G92 Barts XT
Memory 512 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 900 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 1120
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 56
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6870

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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