GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1002 MHz on this specific model. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 47%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15808 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27456 (286%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 get to the max fill rate.