GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with a clock frequency of 740 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 230 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a lot (about 438%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38560 (438%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7440 (169%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.