GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33280 (47%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be a little bit (about 10%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4032 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3888 (36%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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