GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specs to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with core clock speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121856 (173%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (more or less 173%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81536 (173%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20384 (173%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many 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.