GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 860M, which features a clock frequency of 797 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1152 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 152 Watts (338%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a little bit (about 0%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 288 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6448 (51%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.