GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB will be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 6848 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be quite a bit (about 89%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22232 (89%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB is a little bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1808 (18%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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