GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which features core clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (64%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a lot (more or less 25%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9432 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be quite a bit (about 83%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure 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 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.