GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 575 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB will be much (more or less 157%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28832 (157%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be a lot (approximately 28%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2608 (28%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.