AMD is said to be working on a new GPU to replace the outgoing, but still very popular, Radeon HD 7770. The R7 250X will settle in around the €90 range (approx. R1300) and is reportedly based on the same silicon from the newer Oland GPU family, which currently makes up the Radeon R7 240 and R7 250. No details of the card’s launch have been leaked, but it has shown up on some European retailer websites already.
Basing it on Oland doesn’t make a whole lot of sense though, considering that the Radeon HD 7770 is still a whole lot faster than the Radeon R7 250, even when the latter is equipped with GDDR5 memory. The R7 250X, I believe, will instead be a rebranded HD 7770. It will probably miss out on the PowerTune enhancements to GCN, TrueAudio and running Eyefinity on a single card without the use of Displayport adapters, but it should be a good bargain for those looking for a decent mid-range card when the HD 7770 leaves the channel.
| Radeon R7 250X | Radeon HD 7770 GHz | |
| Price (Rands) | TBA | R1500 |
| GPU clock speed | 1.0 GHz | 1.0 GHz |
| Boost clock speed | N/A | N/A |
| Memory clock speed | 1125 MHz | 1125 MHz |
| Onboard memory | 1 or 2GB GDDR5 | 1 or 2GB GDDR5 |
| Memory bandwidth | 72 GB/s | 72 GB/s |
| Memory bus width | 128-bit | 128-bit |
| Shader units/Compute cores | 640 units (10 Compute cores) | 640 units (10 Compute cores) |
| Texture units | 40 | 40 |
| Raster Operators | 16 | 16 |
| Mantle support | Yes | Yes |
| TrueAudio support | No | No |
| PowerTune support | No | No |
As far as power requirements go, it will require a single 6-pin PEG power connector and will run in most chassis without hassle, being only slightly longer than the PCI-Express slot. As far as performance goes considering its proximity to the HD 7770, most games from 2012-2013 will run on high settings at 1080p at around 30 frames per second.
More demanding titles may necessitate lowering quality settings to medium or low details, while the best performance with the card will be found running any game maxed out at 720p.
Already two vendors have had their card designs leaked. ASUS’s leaked design is a single-slot cooler with a rotated impeller fan, while Sapphire is cooking up a dual-slot version with a larger single fan for better cooling and quieter operation.
In case you ever need to pick up a cheap GPU for OpenCL acceleration, this might also be a good choice considering its low power consumption and the extra two compute units it boasts over the Radeon R7 250. It won’t be as good as the next step up, the Bonaire-based R7 260, but it should suffice for most gamers looking for decent 1080p performance without breaking the bank.
Source: TechpowerUp
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