GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a lot (approximately 171%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 29%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (29%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.