GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units 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 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 56704 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a little bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2768 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8192 (69%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.