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GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB has a GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM runs at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 112 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 105 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 250 Watts
Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 57600 MB/sec
Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (about 49%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 33600 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 16400 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 9600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10400 (108%)

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 GT 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

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 GT 512MB Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year July 2008 Nov 7, 2008
Code Name G92a/b R700
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 600 MHz 625 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 1986 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 105 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate 33600 Mtexels/sec 50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 9600 Mpixels/sec 20000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 112 800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 56 40 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 65/55 nm 55 nm
Transistors 754 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

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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