GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, which features a clock frequency of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 999 MHz. It also features a 448-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 216 SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 16112 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 85%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35328 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a bit (about 19%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.