Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 107200 (149%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (about 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (80%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.