GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this specific model. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5770, which uses a 40 nm design. ATi has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTS 250 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores

Radeon HD 5770 Amazon.com Other US-based stores

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTS 250 512MB	Radeon HD 5770
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	March 3, 2009	October 13, 2009
Code Name	G92a/b	Juniper XT
Fab Process	65/55 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	738 MHz	850 MHz
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1100 MHz (2200 MHz effective)	1200 MHz (4800 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	128	800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	40
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	128-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.2
Power (Max TDP)	145 watts	108 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	76800 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	34000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	13600 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.