GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (64%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 25%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9432 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9792 (83%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over 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. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.