GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 147 Watts (294%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (approximately 773%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (773%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.