GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 6848 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 89%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22232 (89%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a small bit (approximately 18%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, 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 calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.