GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 970 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 112 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.