ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128-bit vs MSI Radeon X800 PRO (RX800PRO-TD256)

The maximum pixel fillrate depends on graphics clock rate and the number of Raster Operations Pipelines (ROPs). The Radeon X800 PRO has a big advantage here, as it has many more ROPs, and runs at higher frequency. Better maximum pixel fill rate allows more pixels to be drawn on screen per second, which results in increased graphics card performance, unless there are bottlenecks somewhere else.

The maximum theoretical texture fillrate is dependent on the number of TMUs and graphics clock rate. The Radeon X800 PRO has a substantial lead in this area, because not only it operates at higher frequency, but it also has many more Texture Mapping Units (TMUs). Having better texture fill rate allows the graphics card to use more complex 3D effects and/or map more textures to each textured picture element, which improves visual appearance of games and generated images.

To speed up processing, the graphics cards store 3D scene data, textures and intermediate data, used for image generation, in on-board memory. The video memory usually has much higher bandwidth than system RAM, and more bandwidth allows the GPU to run at higher display resolutions, use larger and more detailed textures, and apply more complex 3D effects and filters. The bandwidth depends on memory type, speed, and width of memory interface. Specifically, higher memory bandwidth of the MSI Radeon X800 PRO graphics card is a direct result of better and higher clocked memory, and wider bus interface.