GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (64%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is much (approximately 79%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20832 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a lot (approximately 124%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14592 (124%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.