Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a lot (about 252%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100800 (252%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.