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

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB comes with a GPU core clock speed of 738 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory is set to run at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 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 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTS 250 512MB	Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	March 3, 2009	Nov 7, 2008
Code Name	G92a/b	R700
Fab Process	65/55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
Memory	512 MB	512 MB (x2)
Core Speed	738 MHz	625 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	1100 MHz	993 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	128	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	64	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	16	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	145 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	20000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.