GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (approximately 200%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (200%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.