Radeon R7 250X Review: Reprising Radeon HD 7770 At $100
AMD's name might be new, but we're already intimately familiar with its Radeon R7 250X (formerly known as the Radeon HD 7770). Can AMD take an old piece of hardware and turn it into something you want to spend money on in 2014? Let's have a quick look...
Test Setup And Benchmarks
I ran the benchmarks on the following page for AMD Radeon R7 260 Review: The Bonaire GPU Rides Again, where I went into depth on average frame rates and frame time variance. For the sake of brevity, I'm emphasizing frame rates this time around. If you want deeper analysis, we invite you to check out the Radeon R7 260 launch story.
What we're adding to the mix are screenshot to show how the detail settings we're choosing actually look at 1920x1080. My intention there is to show that dialing back image quality doesn't necessarily mean AMD's Radeon HD 7770/R7 250X is forced down to ugly levels of game play.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Test System |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2550K (Sandy Bridge), Overclocked to 4.2 GHz @ 1.3 V |
| Motherboard | Asus P8Z77-V LX. LGA 1155, Chipset: Intel Z77M |
| Networking | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller |
| Memory | Corsair Performance Memory, 4 x 4 GB, 1866 MT/s, CL 9-9-9-24-1T |
| Graphics | XFX Radeon R7 250 GDDR51000/1050 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1150 MHz (4600 MT/s)Reference AMD Radeon HD 7750800 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1125 MHz (4500 MT/s)Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 (Representing Radeon R7 250X)1000 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1125 MHz (4500 MT/s)Gigabyte Radeon R7 2601000 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1500 MHz (6000 MT/s)Reference Radeon R7 260X1100 MHz GPU, 2 GB GDDR5 at 1625 MHz (6500 MT/s)Reference Nvidia GT 640900 MHz GPU, 1 GB DDR3 at 891 MHz (1782 MT/s)Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 6501058 MHz GPU, 1 GB DDR3 at 1250 MHz (5000 MT/s)Reference Nvidia GTX 650 Ti925 MHz GPU, 1 GB DDR3 at 1350 MHz (5400 MT/s) |
| Hard Drive | Samsung 840 Pro, 256 GB SSD, SATA 6Gb/s |
| Power | XFX PRO850W, ATX12V, EPS12V |
| Software and Drivers | |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64 |
| DirectX | DirectX 11 |
| Graphics Drivers | AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.5, Nvidia GeForce 332.21 WHQL |
We've almost completely eliminated mechanical storage in the lab, and instead lean on solid-state drives to alleviate I/O-related bottlenecks. Samsung sent all of our offices 256 GB 840 Pros, so we standardize on these exceptional SSDs.
Naturally, discrete graphics cards require a substantial amount of stable power, so XFX sent along its PRO850W 80 PLUS Bronze-certified power supply. This modular PSU employs a single +12 V rail rated for 70 A. XFX claims that this unit provides 850 W of continuous power (not peak) at 50 degrees Celsius (a higher temperature than you'll find inside most enclosures).
| Benchmark Configuration | |
|---|---|
| 3D Games | |
| Metro: Last Light | Version 1.0.0.14, Built-in Benchmark |
| Grid 2 | Version 1.8.85.8679, Built-in Benchmark Scene D6 |
| Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag | Version 1.05, Custom THG Benchmark, 40-Sec |
| Battlefield 4 | Version 1.0.0.1, Custom THG Benchmark, 90-Sec |
| BioShock Infinite | Version 1.1.24.21018, Built-in Benchmark |
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Prev Page AMD's Radeon HD 7770 Becomes The R7 250X Next Page Game Benchmark ResultsDon Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.
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RedJaron Hmm, so they still don't have an attractive alternative to the 7750? Bad move, AMD. Baaaad move . . .Reply -
icraft Eh. I used the HD 7770, and while it is a good budget card, it had its issues. They should have put much faster memory on there, especially for 2GB cards, and bumped core to 1100 or better. My card saw better performance with a 200Mhz memory bump than with a 100Mhz core bump, so memory bandwidth is an issue here.Reply -
SteelCity1981 why would you get this card? why not get the 7770 that's now in the same price range and has 256 more shaders instead. I mean the r250 is the same as the 7700 in every way except the 7700 has 640 more shaders compared to the r250's 384. so it wouldn't make sense to buy an r250 esp now since the 7700 is in the same price range.Reply -
cleeve Reply12650126 said:Why do the reviewers keep using a 2500K?
Why wouldn't we? What's wrong with an overclocked 2500K? -
cleeve Reply12650223 said:why would you get this card? why not get the 7770 that's now in the same price range and has 256 more shaders instead. I mean the r250 is the same as the 7700 in every way except the 7700 has 640 more shaders compared to the r250's 384. so it wouldn't make sense to buy an r250 esp now since the 7700 is in the same price range.
If you read this review you would see that the R7 250X is *exactly* the same as the 7770.
It does not have 384 shaders, it has 640. You're thinking of the R7 250, not the new R7 250X. ;)
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The_Trutherizer Some might say it's unfair to NVidia and Intel, but R7s HAVE to be paired with a Kevari in reviews for people to really get a sense of the options provided by AMD these days. It's just soo relevant. And with games supporting Mantle as well. ASAP. Battlefield already does... Isn't the time more than ripe for people to get a feel for what the future may hold? Personally I've ran the swarm stress test Mantle demo and I know there is a massive difference between D3D and Mantle in both performance and quality. Fair enough... I have a 280x and an Intel 4670 cpu - I'm pretty much agnostic about brands. But I'd sincerely love to see what AMD has actually been cooking up on the entry level.Reply -
SteelCity1981 cleeve I did read it, maybe you should actually read what I wrote I was talking about the r250 not r250x. like I said it doesn't make sense to buy a r250 when you can find 7770's as cheap or even an r250x rebrand for the same price an an r250.Reply -
InvalidError Reply
Because:12650126 said:Why do the reviewers keep using a 2500K?
1) it works
2) for most games and low/mid-range GPUs, it is also just about as fast as the fastest current CPUs so there is no actual urge to use the highest-powered, newest and latest CPUs available.