GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 130

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 130, which uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 500 MHz. The DDR2 memory is set to run at a speed of 250 MHz on this card. It features 48 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 130		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 967% faster than the GeForce GT 130 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 130		12000 MB/sec
	Difference: 116000 (967%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 540%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 130. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 130		12000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64800 (540%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (about 140%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 130, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 130		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (140%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at 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 could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.