GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which has a GPU core clock speed of 675 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 128 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is a small bit (about 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be quite a bit (more or less 36%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.