GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be a lot (about 157%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28832 (157%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2608 (28%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.