GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare all of 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 is set to run at a speed of 1100 MHz on this particular model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be 22% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is a lot (approximately 127%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26432 (127%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1408 (14%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.