GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Geforce GTX 670

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 670, which comes with GPU core speed of 915 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 27 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 670 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 is quite a bit (approximately 33%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25680 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 is a lot (more or less 53%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10080 (53%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.