GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390X 8G is 445% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 313600 (445%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be much (about 291%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 137568 (291%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 55392 (469%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of 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.