GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1150 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 171 Watts (263%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform much faster than the Radeon R7 250 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 68096 (93%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a lot (approximately 101%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24160 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (141%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.