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

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1100 MHz on this card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1126 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTS 250 512MB	Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB
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	512 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	738 MHz	825 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1836 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	1100 MHz	1126 MHz (x2)
Unified Shaders	128	320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	64	16 (x2)
Render Output Units	16	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
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	144128 MB/sec
Texel Rate	47232 Mtexels/sec	26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	11808 Mpixels/sec	26400 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.