Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 250X, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5850 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R7 250X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (about 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (approximately 45%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R7 250X, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.