Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency 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 speaking, the Radeon R9 290X will be 344% faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (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 quite a bit (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 the winner, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.