GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this specific model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250 will be 360% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (360%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be a bit (about 10%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (21%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.