GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 264% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (264%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 391%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 184768 (391%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80992 (686%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.