GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which has clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 102% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 64640 (102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 212%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52176 (212%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 87%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8940 (87%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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