GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 480, which features a core clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 924 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 480 should be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (152%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be a bit (about 3%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot (approximately 211%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (211%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.