GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 783 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 902 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 192 Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 12672 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 89%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22176 (89%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 720 (6%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 max fill rate.