GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 82% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB will be a bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2432 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 992 (8%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.