GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980M, which comes with core clock speeds of 1038 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 97 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (about 30%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22848 (30%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47232 (246%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.