GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 590, which comes with core speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 855 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 168 Watts (85%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 200320 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a bit (about 1%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 896 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39072 (204%)

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 max amount of data (in units of 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 the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.