GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5770, which features a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5770 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (about 126%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42800 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (approximately 41%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 5770, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (41%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.