GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 950, which comes with a clock frequency of 1024 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1652 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 768 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 22272 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (about 56%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27648 (56%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be much (about 71%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13568 (71%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.