GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB is 10% quicker than the Radeon R7 M260X overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB will be much (more or less 139%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27432 (139%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is quite a bit (about 79%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5208 (79%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.