GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1038 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 97 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (about 30%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22848 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be a lot (about 246%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47232 (246%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.