GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 156 Watts (195%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 69696 (97%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a bit (approximately 20%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 7770, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.