GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 56704 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a little bit (more or less 6%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2768 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 69%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8192 (69%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.