GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 117 Watts (146%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 92%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a small bit (approximately 20%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7770, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (20%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.