GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7990 is 718% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 505600 (718%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (about 415%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 195968 (415%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (approximately 415%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48992 (415%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus 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 bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.