In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX SLI.

The 9800 GTX has a 68 MHz higher core clock speed and 68 more Texture Mapping Units than the GeForce GTX 465. This results in the 9800 GTX providing 48.9 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The 9800 GTX has a 68 MHz higher core clock speed than the GeForce GTX 465 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the 9800 GTX providing 2.2 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GTX 465 was released over a year more recently than the 9800 GTX, and so the GeForce GTX 465 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the 9800 GTX.

The GeForce 9800 GTX SLI and the GeForce GTX 465 have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The 9800 GTX has 38.1 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GTX 465, which means that the memory performance of the 9800 GTX is noticeably better than the GeForce GTX 465.

The GeForce 9800 GTX SLI has 128 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 465 has 352. However, the actual shader performance of the 9800 GTX is 86 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 465 is 427. The GeForce GTX 465 having 341 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the 9800 GTX performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The GeForce GTX 465 transistor size technology is 25 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 9800 GTX. This means that the GeForce GTX 465 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 9800 GTX.

The GeForce 9800 GTX SLI requires 280 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 465 requires 200 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the 9800 GTX and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GeForce GTX 465. The 9800 GTX requires 80 Watts more than the GeForce GTX 465 to run. The difference is significant enough that the 9800 GTX may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GeForce GTX 465.