GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1012 MHz on this model. It features 48 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should 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 a lot (about 668%) better at AF 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

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.