GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is 8% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4480 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should be much (approximately 24%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be a bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (8%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.