GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 960, which has a clock speed of 1127 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960 will be 59% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (59%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be much (approximately 53%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24896 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24256 (205%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.