GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs 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

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (about 4167%) faster with regards to AF 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM), by far. (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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.