GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 560

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 560, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 810 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1001 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 336 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 560 will be 0% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 69%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31440 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6720 (35%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.