Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 250 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon R9 M275X in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be quite a bit (more or less 50%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is much (about 80%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (80%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few 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.