GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which comes with core clock speeds of 915 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be 13% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be much (more or less 33%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25680 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be just a bit (approximately 14%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2760 (14%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.