GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 950M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 914 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 142 Watts (258%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (about 110%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40240 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 950M, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4576 (31%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.