Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (approximately 26%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB is just a bit (about 11%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (11%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.