GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6770, which comes with core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 6770 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (more or less 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

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (more or less 33%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6770, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.