GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7770 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be a lot (more or less 52%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (approximately 142%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (142%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.