GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 470, which has a core clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 837 MHz. It also uses a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 448 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 40 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5920 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (more or less 126%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42808 (126%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5080 (26%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.