GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 590, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 855 MHz on this model. 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 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 257920 (366%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is a lot (about 64%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30464 (64%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46464 (393%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.