GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 264% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (264%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 391%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 184768 (391%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (more or less 686%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80992 (686%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.