GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 113 Watts (135%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 191%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (191%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.