GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which features core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 is 82% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be a bit (about 11%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4968 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (more or less 96%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11392 (96%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.