GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 7040 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be much (more or less 92%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22608 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 15%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1548 (15%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.