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

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. ATi has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTS 250 1GB	Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	March 3, 2009	Jan 28, 2008
Code Name	G92a/b	R680
Fab Process	65/55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB (x2)
Core Speed	738 MHz	825 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	1100 MHz	900 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	128	320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	64	16 (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	(N/A) watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	70400 MB/sec	115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	26400 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.