GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is quite a bit (about 281%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34832 (281%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be just a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 592 (5%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB 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 it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.