GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 1050 3GB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB, which features core speeds of 1392 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.