GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be much (approximately 117%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55248 (117%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be much (approximately 86%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10152 (86%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.