GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features a clock frequency of 941 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 870M should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (more or less 123%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58160 (123%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10776 (91%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.