GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which has a GPU core clock speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 960 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 is 105% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (about 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 a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.