GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1100 MHz on this card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is a small bit (more or less 9%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4032 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1008 (9%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.