GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is much (approximately 281%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34832 (281%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 592 (5%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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