GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 924 MHz on this card. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 49408 (39%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 83%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34800 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (75%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.