GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 6848 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a lot (more or less 89%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22232 (89%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1808 (18%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.