GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 850 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 127 Watts (181%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (135%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (about 336%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (336%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (336%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one 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, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.