GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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		108 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6770 should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 should be just a bit (more or less 7%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 will be much (more or less 50%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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