GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6770 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (about 113%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6770. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 6770, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6770		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.