GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (approximately 88%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67328 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 52864 (275%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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