GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which has core clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTX should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be a bit (about 17%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX is a lot (more or less 28%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (28%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.