Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (216%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should perform much faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 248000 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (about 220%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88000 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (220%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.