GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X should be 25% faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a small bit (approximately 7%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be a lot (more or less 22%) better at AA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.