GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB should be much (more or less 171%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a lot (about 29%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.