GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 56704 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a bit (more or less 6%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2768 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is much (about 69%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.