GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M385X should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is quite a bit (more or less 30%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be a lot (approximately 49%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5792 (49%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.