GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 275

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 275, which has GPU clock speed of 633 MHz, and 896 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 1134 MHz through a 448-bit bus. It also is made up of 240 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 52%) more effective at 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 lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, though only just barely. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.