GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 is 150% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 96%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41280 (96%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17360 (161%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.