GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 285 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 648 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 1242 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up 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

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 48%) better at anisotropic filtering 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

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 8%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.