GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this specific model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is a lot (approximately 743%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41632 (743%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a lot (approximately 322%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 420, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.