GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (about 129%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (approximately 100%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (100%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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.