GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with a clock frequency of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 837 MHz. It also makes use of a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 448 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 40 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 is 5% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5920 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (approximately 126%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42808 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (approximately 26%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5080 (26%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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