GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which comes with GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 924 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 480 Stream Processors, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 145408 (454%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is just a bit (about 13%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5360 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21760 (184%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.