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

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 6%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.