GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 5%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2432 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 992 (8%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.