GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 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 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7770 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (61%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is a little bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (more or less 67%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a 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 amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.