GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, 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 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7770 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be a bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be much (about 67%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (67%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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