GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 715 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTS 250 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon R7 M260 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (340%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 175%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30072 (175%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 250 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6088 (106%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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