GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 738 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB will be just a bit (more or less 9%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4032 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1008 (9%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.