GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare those specs to the Geforce GTX 690, which comes with a clock speed of 915 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (186%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Geforce GTX 690 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 326912 (568%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be much (about 597%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200640 (597%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48960 (510%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 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 graphics 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 graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.