GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 675 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1100 MHz on this card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GTX will be 13% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 8320 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be just a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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