GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, which comes with a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1012 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 48 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is 78% faster than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
	Difference: 25216 (78%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (about 236%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (236%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4600 (92%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.