GeForce GT 430 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 set the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be much (about 322%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36032 (322%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be a lot (more or less 322%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9008 (322%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.