GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1126 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73728 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be much (approximately 64%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a lot (more or less 144%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (144%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.