GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It features 112 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB Amazon.com

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB Amazon.com

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9800 GT 1GB	GeForce 9800 GT 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	July 2008	July 2008
Code Name	G92a/b	G92a/b
Fab Process	65/55 nm	65/55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz	600 MHz
Shader Speed	1500 MHz	1500 MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz (1800 MHz effective)	900 MHz (1800 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	112	112
Texture Mapping Units	56	56
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	105 watts	105 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	57600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	33600 Mtexels/sec	33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	9600 Mpixels/sec	9600 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per 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 this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.