GeForce GT 430 1GB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be quite a bit (about 322%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36032 (322%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be a lot (more or less 322%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.