GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 380 4G should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (159%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is much (more or less 130%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61408 (130%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19232 (163%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many 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.