GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 83 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 will be 167% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (approximately 102%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34400 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (approximately 183%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (183%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.