GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6770		108 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB will be 5% faster than the Radeon HD 6770 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a lot (more or less 31%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6770. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11232 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (22%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 video 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.