GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which has 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 250 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (92%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be a small bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 should be quite a bit (about 21%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.