GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1012 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 48 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (240%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
	Difference: 95616 (295%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (more or less 668%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66800 (668%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (approximately 284%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14200 (284%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.