Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1150 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 229 Watts (352%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 248% faster than the Radeon R7 250 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 182400 (248%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 867%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 208000 (867%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (approximately 1060%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R7 250, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 84800 (1060%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 processed per second. This 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 graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.