GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1425 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 4G should be 159% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (159%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G will be a lot (approximately 130%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61408 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G should be much (approximately 163%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 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 reach the max fill rate.