GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (about 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (more or less 50%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (50%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.