GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R7 250E

Place in the ranking	670	749
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	1.14	0.14
Power efficiency	5.54	1.21
Architecture	GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)	Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013)
GPU code name	Cape Verde	GT200
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	20 December 2013 (10 years ago)	16 June 2008 (16 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$109	$449

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

R7 250E has 714% better value for money than GTX 260.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	512	192
Core clock speed	800 MHz	576 MHz
Number of transistors	1,500 million	1,400 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	65 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	55 Watt	182 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature	no data	105 °C
Texture fill rate	25.60	36.86
Floating-point processing power	0.8192 TFLOPS	0.4769 TFLOPS
ROPs	16	28
TMUs	32	64

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16
Length	168 mm	267 mm
Height	no data	4.376" (111 mm) (11.1 cm)
Width	1-slot	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	None	2x 6-pin
SLI options	-	+

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	896 MB
Memory bus width	128 Bit	448 Bit
Memory clock speed	1125 MHz	999 MHz
Memory bandwidth	72 GB/s	111.9 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort	Dual Link DVIHDTV
Multi monitor support	no data	+
HDMI	+	+
Maximum VGA resolution	no data	2048x1536
Audio input for HDMI	no data	S/PDIF

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (11_1)	11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model	5.1	4.0
OpenGL	4.6	2.1
OpenCL	1.2	1.1
Vulkan	1.2.131	N/A
CUDA	-	+

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	4.37	3.15
Recency	20 December 2013	16 June 2008
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	896 MB
Chip lithography	28 nm	65 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	55 Watt	182 Watt

R7 250E has a 38.7% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 5 years, a 14.3% higher maximum VRAM amount, a 132.1% more advanced lithography process, and 230.9% lower power consumption.

The Radeon R7 250E is our recommended choice as it beats the GeForce GTX 260 in performance tests.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.