GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 will be 133% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (approximately 50%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (more or less 200%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of 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.