GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which has a clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1100 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GTX should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be quite a bit (more or less 29%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (29%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (13%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.