GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with a core clock frequency of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (383%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is 144% quicker than the Radeon R7 240 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB should be quite a bit (approximately 224%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32632 (224%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5968 (102%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.