GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB comes with a core clock frequency of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1100 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 160 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.