Compare any two graphics cards:

GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GS makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 191%) better at AF 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 high levels of AA 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

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GeForce 8800 GS

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GeForce 9800 GX2

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce 8800 GS	GeForce 9800 GX2
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Jan 2008	Mar 2008
Code Name	G92	G92
Memory	384 MB	512 MB (x2)
Core Speed	550 MHz	600 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	1600 MHz	2000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP)	105 watts	197 watts
Bandwidth	38400 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	26400 Mtexels/sec	76800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	6600 Mpixels/sec	19200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	96	128 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	48	64 (x2)
Render Output Units	12	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	192-bit	256-bit (x2)
Fab Process	65 nm	65 nm
Transistors	754 million	754 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

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