GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 is 20% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a small bit (about 13%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (about 42%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (42%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.