GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is just a bit (approximately 7%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be much (about 50%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (50%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface 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 higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in a second.

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