GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator 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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should be much faster than the Radeon R7 250 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be quite a bit (about 101%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (more or less 141%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.