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

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

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 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is just a bit (approximately 6%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per 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 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.