Radeon R7 250X vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which features a GPU core clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
Radeon R7 250X		2860 points
	Difference: 5101 (178%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 250X in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (approximately 161%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 250X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.