GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 275% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 193600 (275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (more or less 151%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71168 (151%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (approximately 151%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17792 (151%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.