GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 285 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, which features a clock speed of 648 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1242 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 240 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 285 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (approximately 48%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 285 1GB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1536 (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.

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 moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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