Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 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 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

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280 should be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 250 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (approximately 335%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, 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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.