GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7850, which has a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a bit (about 17%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7808 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot (approximately 133%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15712 (133%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.