GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 675 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 128 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GTX should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be much (more or less 29%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is just a bit (about 13%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (13%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.