GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which has core speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTX should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a small bit (about 17%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTX is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (28%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.