Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
Radeon R7 250		1836 points
	Difference: 8773 (478%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 235 Watts (362%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better than the Radeon R7 250 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 246400 (335%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (approximately 487%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116800 (487%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the Radeon R7 250, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (540%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.