GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 690, which comes with core speeds of 915 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256512 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit (approximately 205%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 157440 (205%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39360 (205%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in a second.

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