GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 117 Watts (146%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (more or less 92%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a little bit (about 20%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (20%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.