GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 950, which has a core clock speed of 1024 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1652 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 768 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 950 should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 35328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be a little bit (more or less 4%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is much (about 178%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.