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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 comes with a GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2 197 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 97 Watts (49%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 128000 MB/sec
Difference: 128000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (more or less 202%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 155200 (202%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 73600 (383%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9800 GX2 Radeon HD 5970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 November 2009
Code Name G92 Hemlock XT
Memory 512 MB (x2) 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 725 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 4000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts 294 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 256000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 232000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 92800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 1600 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 160 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 64 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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