GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (90%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 113%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (113%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (approximately 33%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (33%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result 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 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 of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.