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

Intro

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 738 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 825 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB 70400 MB/sec
Difference: 73728 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB is a lot (more or less 79%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB 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

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GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTS 250 512MB Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 3, 2009 Jan 28, 2008
Code Name G92a/b R680
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 738 MHz 825 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 2200 MHz 2252 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 145 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 70400 MB/sec 144128 MB/sec
Texel Rate 47232 Mtexels/sec 26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 11808 Mpixels/sec 26400 Mpixels/sec
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)
Fab Process 65/55 nm 55 nm
Transistors 754 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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