GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 450, which comes with a clock frequency of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 902 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (86%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 70272 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (about 207%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51744 (207%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (about 53%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6672 (53%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.