GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be 11% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 7040 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is a lot (approximately 92%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22608 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1548 (15%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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