GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 902 MHz on this model. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (86%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (about 207%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51744 (207%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (approximately 53%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6672 (53%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one 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 is also dependant 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 maximum fill rate.