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GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB comes with a GPU core speed of 738 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 128 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5770 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a lot (more or less 39%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5770. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13232 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is a bit (about 15%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1792 (15%)

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

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GeForce GTS 250 512MB

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Radeon HD 5770

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTS 250 512MB	Radeon HD 5770
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	March 3, 2009	October 13, 2009
Code Name	G92a/b	Juniper XT
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	738 MHz	850 MHz
Memory Speed	2200 MHz	4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	145 watts	108 watts
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	76800 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	34000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	13600 Mpixels/sec
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
Fab Process	65/55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	754 million	1040 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

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