GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which has GPU core speed of 738 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should in theory be much better 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 much (approximately 21%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2880 (24%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.