GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 230

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 230, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this card. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 132 Watts (203%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 230 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 773%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (773%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce GT 230, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (336%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.