GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 285 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, which has a clock speed of 648 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1242 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 240 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30976 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (more or less 48%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB will be a little bit (about 8%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1536 (8%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.