GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 62 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 106% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 65920 (106%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 85%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92). (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (about 85%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92), and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (85%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.