GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set 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)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be 17% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be a small bit (more or less 7%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be a lot (about 50%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.