Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M280X should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R7 250 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be quite a bit (more or less 110%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26400 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (80%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.