GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is a small bit (about 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4032 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1008 (9%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.