GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 902 MHz on this model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (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 (more or less 89%) better at AF 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

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a bit (about 6%) better at AA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.