GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (about 96%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 161%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.