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Radeon R7 250X Review: Reprising Radeon HD 7770 At £75

Radeon R7 250X Review: Reprising Radeon HD 7770 At £75
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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...

Except for the Radeon R9 290-series cards, sporting AMD's Hawaii GPU, all of the other Radeon R7 and R9 boards we've seen are re-branded versions of the Radeon HD 7000 family. The Radeon R9 280X falls between the Radeon HD 7970 and 7970 GHz Edition. The Radeon R7 270 and 270X are based on the Pitcairn GPU. The Radeon R7 260X hosts the same graphics processor as the Radeon HD 7790.

Clearly, the company feels that the first-generation GCN graphics cards still have a lot to offer, especially with a handful of clock rate tweaks. We wouldn't necessarily disagree; the Radeon line-up offers a viable spectrum of performance, from the entry-level Radeon R7 240 to the flagship Radeon R9 290X.

We'd obviously prefer to be testing genuinely new hardware, rather than re-badged versions of old models. With that said, there seems to be a formula for making already-seen graphics cards more successful: increase performance and reduce price. We saw this from Nvidia's GeForce GTX 770 which, at launch, was essentially a highly overclocked GeForce GTX 680 with a hefty price cut. Even more impressive was AMD's Radeon R9 280X, which surfaced looking a lot like an overclocked Radeon HD 7970 at its core, yet came to market about a hundred pounds cheaper than the product it replaced. Of course, the R9 280X jumped in price shortly thereafter, while the GTX 770 fell, but that's another story...

With all of that in mind, when AMD told us that it was re-badging the Radeon HD 7770 as a "new" Radeon R7 250X, we were really hoping the company would increase clock rates and drop the price so we could get excited about it. Disappointingly, the frequencies aren't changing, though AMD claims pricing should fall (as of this writing, there is no online availability to confirm, but AMD is promising $100 for the U.S. so we're guesstimating £75 for the UK).


GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Radeon R7 250
GDDR5
Radeon HD 7770 / Radeon R7 250X
Radeon R7 260
Radeon R7 260X
Shaders
768384
640
768
896
Texture Units
64
24
40
48
56
ROPs
168
16
16
16
Process Technology
28 nm (Kepler)
28 nm (GCN)
28 nm (GCN)
28 nm (GCN)
28 nm (GCN)
Core/Boost Clock
925 MHz1000/1050
MHz
1 GHz
1000 MHz
1100 MHz
Memory Clock
1350 MHz
1150 MHz
1125 MHz
1500 MHz
1625 MHz
Memory Bus
128-bit128-bit
128-bit128-bit128-bit
Memory Bandwidth
86.4 GB/s73.6 GB/s
72 GB/s
96 GB/s
104 GB/s
Graphics Memory
 1 or 2 GB GDDR5
1 or 2 GB GDDR5
1 or 2 GB GDDR5
 1 or 2 GB GDDR51 or 2 GB GDDR5
Power Connectors
1 x 6-pin
N/A
1 x 6-pin1 x 6-pin1 x 6-pin
Maximum TDP
110 W
60 W
80 W
95 W
115 W
Typical Price Range
£100 - £125
£65-£90
Radeon HD 7770:
£80 - £100
Radeon R7 250X:
UK Price Not Yet Available

£90-£100
£90-£120

A £75 mark sounds really nice compared to the Radeon HD 7770's price when it launched. But it looks a lot less impressive after a look at online retailer's prices. The 7770 has shown up for as little as £80, although the current average lands around £90. If the the R7 250X can keep that figure down at £70, we'll certainly take the discount. Though, again, it's not something we're going to get excited about.

To be frank, if I didn't think that the Radeon HD 7770 was such an important mainstream graphics card in the first place, I would have probably posted a small news item about the name change and continued on with my work. But in my opinion, the HD 7770 (and now R7 250X) is the most important budget-oriented graphics card available. It's the cheapest option that lets you play most games comfortably at 1920x1080 with low to medium detail settings.

If you're interested in the technical aspects and features of AMD's Cape Verde GPU, check out AMD Radeon HD 7770 And 7750 Review: Familiar Speed, Less Power. Today's story focuses on gaming performance and value calculations. So, let's get on with the benchmarks.

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