Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5850 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is quite a bit (about 31%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (about 45%) better at AA than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (45%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.