GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4770, which has GPU 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 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 117 Watts (146%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (more or less 220%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 4770, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (60%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB 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 the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.