Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 216000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (about 172%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (172%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.