Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a lot superior to 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 will be a lot (approximately 487%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (about 540%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R7 250, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.