GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1026 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 192 Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 29504 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (more or less 167%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a bit (approximately 13%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (13%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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 AA, HDR and higher screen 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 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.