GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 210

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 210, which comes with clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (535%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 210 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 210		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (approximately 1530%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72088 (1530%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16844 (715%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.