GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which comes with core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (about 111%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40400 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be a small bit (about 8%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (8%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.