Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 250		1836 points
	Difference: 6125 (334%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (226%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (about 335%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80496 (335%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon R7 250, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21856 (273%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.