GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB features a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is made up of 112 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTS 250 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9800 GT 1GB	GeForce GTS 250 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	July 2008	March 3, 2009
Code Name	G92a/b	G92a/b
Fab Process	65/55 nm	65/55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz	738 MHz
Shader Speed	1500 MHz	1836 MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz	1100 MHz
Unified Shaders	112	128
Texture Mapping Units	56	64
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.1
Power (Max TDP)	105 watts	145 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	70400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	33600 Mtexels/sec	47232 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	9600 Mpixels/sec	11808 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.