GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much (about 63%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29568 (63%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7392 (63%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.