GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be 8% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4480 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be a lot (about 24%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (8%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.