GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960 should be much faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is quite a bit (about 80%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20064 (125%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.