GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121984 (173%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a bit (more or less 5%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2176 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.