GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 320

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 320, which comes with a clock frequency of 540 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 790 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 72 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 154 Watts (358%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 102720 (406%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (about 493%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63840 (493%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (more or less 344%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14880 (344%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.