GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 260 Core 216

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, which features clock speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 216 SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (approximately 85%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35328 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be just a bit (about 19%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3072 (19%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB 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. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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