GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4770, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 40%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.