GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 1060

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 1060, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1506 MHz, and 6144 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 2000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1060 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 68608 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 should be much (about 57%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43680 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 53088 (277%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.