GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 590, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 855 MHz on this particular model. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 168 Watts (85%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 200320 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is a small bit (approximately 1%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 896 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39072 (204%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 reach the max fill rate.