GeForce 9800 GX2 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 RAM runs at a speed of 1150 MHz on this particular 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)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 132 Watts (203%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be 74% faster than the Radeon R7 250 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (74%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 220%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (140%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over 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 RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.