GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be 105% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be much (approximately 117%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55248 (117%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a lot (about 86%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10152 (86%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.