GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1100 MHz on this specific card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 860M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 797 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1152 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 get to the maximum fill rate.