Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which features 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 made up of 384 SPUs, 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 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon R7 250 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (74%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (more or less 118%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28200 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (approximately 190%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (190%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.