GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB comes with a core clock frequency of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory 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.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which comes with core speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 288 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.