GeForce GTS 250 512MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		145 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is a little bit (more or less 7%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is a lot (approximately 22%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 512MB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (22%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.