GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 113 Watts (135%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (about 191%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (191%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (more or less 191%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12600 (191%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.