GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. ATi has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed 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)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 7%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 50%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one 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 called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.