GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 950, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1024 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1652 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 768 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 950 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 35328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is a small bit (about 4%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20960 (178%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.