GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 941 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1344 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be a lot (more or less 37%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28592 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a little bit (about 18%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3384 (18%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of 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.