GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with a core clock speed of 740 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also makes use of 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

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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, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be quite a bit (about 438%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is superior to the GeForce GT 230, 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.