GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 275

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 275, which comes with core speeds of 633 MHz on the GPU, and 1134 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 240 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 1% faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 992 (1%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 52%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26160 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 275, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1476 (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.

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.