GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1024 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1652 MHz on this particular model. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 21% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 22272 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 56%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27648 (56%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is much (more or less 71%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13568 (71%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.