GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 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 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7950 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (241%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be quite a bit (about 90%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42368 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13792 (117%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.