Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 109% quicker than the Radeon R7 250 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (109%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (about 183%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (183%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 240%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (240%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.