GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which has core clock speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 7040 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is quite a bit (approximately 92%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22608 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1548 (15%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.