GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which comes with a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		40 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 157 Watts (393%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much faster than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (more or less 4167%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		1800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75000 (4167%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18300 (2033%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.