GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is a small bit (about 19%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be much (approximately 67%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per 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. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.