GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5670, which has a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 5670 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a lot (about 205%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31732 (205%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 5670, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5608 (90%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the video card 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 amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.