GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be much (approximately 120%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40320 (120%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34752 (362%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.