GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 800 SPUs along with 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)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 3840 (6%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is much (about 46%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11376 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is a lot (more or less 40%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4140 (40%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.