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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850 151 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2 197 Watts
Difference: 46 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (more or less 47%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2 76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850 52200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 24600 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850 23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2 19200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4000 (21%)

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 GX2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5850

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 GX2 Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Mar 2008 September 30, 2009
Code Name G92 Cypress PRO
Memory 512 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 600 MHz (x2) 725 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz (x2) 4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 197 watts 151 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76800 Mtexels/sec 52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19200 Mpixels/sec 23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 (x2) 1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 (x2) 72
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9800 GX2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5850

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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