GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is 5% quicker than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB will be a lot (approximately 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6770 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11232 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (22%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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