GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 772 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64384 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (about 55%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27392 (55%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17856 (93%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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