GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250, which has a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1150 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (115%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 250 should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be much (approximately 80%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (about 35%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (35%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.