GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 960, which has a core clock frequency of 1127 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be just a bit (approximately 6%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4672 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be quite a bit (more or less 88%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16864 (88%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.