GeForce 830M vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (688%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 113600 (789%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (about 366%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60336 (366%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (approximately 133%) better at AA than the GeForce 830M, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10968 (133%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.