GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		40 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 157 Watts (393%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 1900% faster than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (more or less 4167%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		1800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75000 (4167%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 2033%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM), and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18300 (2033%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.