GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB comes with a core clock speed of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which features core speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTS 250 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4830 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTS 250 512MB	Radeon HD 4830 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	March 3, 2009	Oct 21, 2008
Code Name	G92a/b	RV770 LE
Fab Process	65/55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16
Memory	512 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	738 MHz	575 MHz
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1100 MHz	900 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	640(128x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	32
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	145 watts	95 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	57600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	18400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	9200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 get to the max fill rate.