GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 960M, which comes with clock speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (123%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a little bit (about 8%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3392 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5728 (49%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.