GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (90%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (about 113%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (113%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 33%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (33%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.