GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1150 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250 should be 28% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (28%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 will be just a bit (approximately 15%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be much (approximately 30%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 250, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (30%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.