GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4770, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4770 should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is a lot (approximately 40%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 reach the max fill rate.