GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (64%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 79%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20832 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be much (more or less 124%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14592 (124%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.