GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580, which has clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121984 (173%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is just a bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2176 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25248 (214%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one 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. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.