GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which has GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 128 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 24320 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 96%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37632 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (more or less 31%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4512 (31%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.