Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 should perform much faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot (more or less 31%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few 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.