GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs GeForce GTX 1050 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB, which has core speeds of 1392 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be 22% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 15616 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be much (more or less 41%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19584 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (183%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many 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.