GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be 2% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a lot (about 281%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34832 (281%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is just a bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 592 (5%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.