GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1038 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 97 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (more or less 30%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22848 (30%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47232 (246%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.