GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (91%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a bit (approximately 7%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (more or less 144%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX+, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16992 (144%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.