GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features clock 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 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 6870, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (more or less 50%) faster with regards to 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

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.