GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (173%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (about 88%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41568 (88%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is much (more or less 151%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17792 (151%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.