GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 950, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1024 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1652 MHz on this particular model. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 22272 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 56%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27648 (56%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is a lot (more or less 71%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13568 (71%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out 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 DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.