GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this specific card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (156%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 should be much (approximately 329%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (329%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (186%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.