GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 250 should be 156% faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (156%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 will be much (approximately 329%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (329%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (186%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.