GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 1060

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 1060, which uses a 16 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1506 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1060 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 68608 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be much (approximately 57%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43680 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 53088 (277%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.