GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB uses a 90 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 513 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 792 MHz on this particular model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 20 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which has core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce 9800 GX2 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB	GeForce 9800 GX2
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Nov 2006 (640)	Mar 2008
Code Name	G80	G92
Fab Process	90 nm	65 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	640 MB	512 MB (x2)
Core Speed	513 MHz	600 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1188 MHz	1500 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	792 MHz	1000 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	96	128 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	48	64 (x2)
Render Output Units	20	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	320-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	143 watts	197 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	63360 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	24624 Mtexels/sec	76800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10260 Mpixels/sec	19200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.