GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which has clock speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 41%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13632 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is much (about 23%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2208 (23%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.