GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250, which features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 132 Watts (203%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much faster than the Radeon R7 250 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (74%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 220%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (220%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is much (more or less 140%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (140%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 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 video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.