GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 570, which features a core clock speed of 732 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 950 MHz. It also makes use of a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 60 TAUs, and 40 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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 speaking, the GeForce GTX 570 should perform a little 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 should be quite a bit (about 75%) better at 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.