GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 67% quicker than the Radeon HD 5770 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (more or less 126%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42800 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (approximately 41%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5770, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (41%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.