GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 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 features 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7770 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be just a bit (about 19%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (67%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.