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

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which features a clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (about 212%) faster with regards to texture 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

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, by a large margin. (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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 get to the maximum fill rate.