GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4730, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be 22% quicker than the Radeon HD 4730 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be a lot (approximately 111%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24832 (111%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4730, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6208 (111%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.