GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which comes with a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (48%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 109%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (109%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 39%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (39%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.