GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with a clock speed of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1002 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 512 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121984 (173%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be a bit (more or less 5%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2176 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (more or less 214%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25248 (214%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends 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 maximum fill rate.