GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 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 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be 11% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (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%) faster with regards to 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 just a bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.