GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be much (about 127%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26432 (127%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1408 (14%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.