GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 680, which features core speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 should be 50% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64256 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a lot (more or less 68%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51968 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12992 (68%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus 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 higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.