GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a lot (about 743%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41632 (743%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB is much (about 322%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9008 (322%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.