GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 570, which comes with GPU clock speed of 732 MHz, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 950 MHz through a 320-bit bus. It also features 480 Stream Processors, 60 TAUs, and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 570 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 75%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32880 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be a lot (more or less 53%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10080 (53%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.