GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, which uses a 16 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1506 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1152 SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 68608 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be much (approximately 41%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31632 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.