GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GX2 features a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It features 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 9800 GX2 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTS 250 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9800 GX2	GeForce GTS 250 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Mar 2008	March 3, 2009
Code Name	G92	G92a/b
Fab Process	65 nm	65/55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	512 MB (x2)	512 MB
Core Speed	600 MHz (x2)	738 MHz
Shader Speed	1500 MHz (x2)	1836 MHz
Memory Speed	1000 MHz (x2)	1100 MHz
Unified Shaders	128 (x2)	128
Texture Mapping Units	64 (x2)	64
Render Output Units	16 (x2)	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit (x2)	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.1
Power (Max TDP)	197 watts	145 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	128000 MB/sec	70400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	76800 Mtexels/sec	47232 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	19200 Mpixels/sec	11808 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.