GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 280, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 602 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1107 MHz on this card. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units 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 be 146% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a lot (about 43%) more effective at 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

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (more or less 101%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.