GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73792 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be quite a bit (approximately 66%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31168 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11712 (99%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 a second.

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