GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 128 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 233% faster than the GeForce 8800 GS overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (more or less 191%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (191%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics 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 number of Render Output Units 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.