GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 56704 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be a small bit (more or less 6%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2768 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be much (about 69%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out 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 handling 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 card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.