GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 92%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (20%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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