GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250X, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 141 Watts (148%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 will be 97% quicker than the Radeon R7 250X overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 69696 (97%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a bit (more or less 20%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a little bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (20%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.