GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4770 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (38%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 97%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23232 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 192 (2%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.