GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB has a core clock frequency of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has 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 Texture Address Units 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 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4850 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTS 250 1GB	Radeon HD 4850 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	March 3, 2009	Jun 25, 2008
Code Name	G92a/b	RV770 PRO
Fab Process	65/55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	738 MHz	625 MHz
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1100 MHz	993 MHz
Unified Shaders	128	800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units	64	40
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	110 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	63552 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	25000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	10000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.