GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (241%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (about 121%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57264 (121%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18048 (153%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.