Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 will be 233% quicker than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (about 161%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64496 (161%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13856 (87%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.