Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1150 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (189%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should be 109% faster than the Radeon R7 250 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (109%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is quite a bit (about 183%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (183%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (approximately 240%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 250, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.