GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a speed of 1126 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, in theory, should perform much faster than 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+ will be a lot (more or less 79%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20832 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (more or less 124%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX+, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14592 (124%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.