GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which features a clock frequency of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ will be 11% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 7040 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be much (about 92%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22608 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1548 (15%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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