GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 40%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (25%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.