GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with clock speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

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 speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should be 105% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (approximately 66%) more effective at 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 superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, 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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per 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 graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.