GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (355%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (about 171%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80768 (171%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39392 (334%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card 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 number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.