AMD Radeon R7 250 vs AMD Radeon R9 280X

Compare AMD Radeon R7 250 2 GB vs AMD Radeon R9 280X 3 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

Benchmark Score
Specifications
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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

352 points

1687 points

379% significantly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

9 FPS

40 FPS

31 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

5 FPS

25 FPS

19 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

7 FPS

35 FPS

28 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

2 FPS

14 FPS

12 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

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Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1000 MHz

17% slightly higher core clock speed

850 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1050 MHz

5% slightly higher boost clock speed

1000 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

2 GiB

3 GiB

49% significantly more memory

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

128 Bit

384 Bit

200% significantly larger memory bus width

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

72 GB/s

288 GB/s

300% significantly higher memory bandwidth

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

75 W

233% significantly lower TDP

250 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

14.8 Gigapixels/s

32 Gigapixels/s

116% significantly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

29.6 Gigatexels/s

128 Gigatexels/s

332% significantly higher texture rate

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

512

2048

300% significantly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128

300% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

100% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

360th of 586

226th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon R7 200 Series

Radeon R9 200 Series

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.4

4.5

Radeon R7 250 vs Radeon R9 280X specs and performance

For gaming, the Radeon R9 280X graphics card is better than the Radeon R7 250 in our tests.

Our database shows that the Radeon R7 250 has a slightly higher core clock speed. This is the frequency at which the graphics core is running at. While not necessarily an indicator of overall performance, this metric can be useful when comparing two GPUs based on the same architecture. In addition, the Radeon R7 250 also has a slightly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

As stated by the manufacturer, the Radeon R9 280X has significantly more memory with 3 GiB of memory compared to 2 GiB. If you're planning at playing games at high resolutions with high-quality textures, you will need a lot of memory.

In addition, the Radeon R7 250 has a significantly lower TDP at 75 W when compared to the Radeon R9 280X at 250 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the Radeon R9 280X over the Radeon R7 250.