GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which comes with clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 7040 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (more or less 75%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18576 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be just a bit (about 5%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 540 (5%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.