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GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 has a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 280, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 602 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 1107 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 240 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 59%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28640 (59%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 64 (0%)

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

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GeForce 9800 GX2

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GeForce GTX 280

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9800 GX2	GeForce GTX 280
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Mar 2008	June 17, 2008
Code Name	G92	G200
Memory	512 MB (x2)	1024 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz (x2)	602 MHz
Memory Speed	2000 MHz (x2)	2214 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	197 watts	236 watts
Bandwidth	128000 MB/sec	141696 MB/sec
Texel Rate	76800 Mtexels/sec	48160 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	19200 Mpixels/sec	19264 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	128 (x2)	240
Texture Mapping Units	64 (x2)	80
Render Output Units	16 (x2)	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit (x2)	512-bit
Fab Process	65 nm	65 nm
Transistors	754 million	1400 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

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