GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 280, which comes with core clock speeds of 602 MHz on the GPU, and 1107 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (125%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 84096 (146%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (about 43%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14560 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9664 (101%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.