GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 is 150% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (approximately 79%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37248 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16352 (138%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.