GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 should be 67% faster than the Radeon HD 5770 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (more or less 126%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, by far. (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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.