GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 151%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50880 (151%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (193%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.