GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 575 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is much (about 157%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be much (approximately 28%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.