GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152000 (211%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (more or less 260%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104128 (260%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (about 350%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56064 (350%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.