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AMD Radeon R7 250X

AMD Radeon R7 250X in 2025: Budget Veteran or Obsolete Solution?

An overview of the capabilities, performance, and relevance of the graphics card years later.

1. Architecture and Key Features

GCN 1.0 Architecture: Foundations of Reliability

The AMD Radeon R7 250X, released in 2014, is based on the first generation of Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. This design has provided the card with longevity, but in 2025, its capabilities appear modest. The manufacturing process is 28 nm, significantly lagging behind modern 5–7 nm chips. The number of stream processors is 640, and the base clock frequency is up to 1000 MHz.

Support for Technologies: Minimal Modern Features

The card does not support ray tracing, DLSS, or FidelityFX Super Resolution. However, it is compatible with Mantle (an outdated API) and partially with Vulkan, allowing it to run some modern games at low settings. Among relevant features is FreeSync support, which is beneficial for AMD monitor owners with refresh rates up to 75 Hz.

2. Memory: Modest Specs for Modern Tasks

GDDR5 and 2 GB: Limitations Are Evident

The R7 250X is equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth is 96 GB/s. For games in 2025, this is insufficient: even at Full HD, high-quality textures and effects quickly exhaust the VRAM capacity. In professional tasks (such as rendering), the memory limitation becomes critical.

Tip: For games up to 2018 (e.g., The Witcher 3), 2 GB is sufficient at medium settings in 1080p (30–40 FPS). However, in projects like Cyberpunk 2077 (with patches from 2024-2025), the card barely reaches 15–20 FPS even at minimum settings.

3. Gaming Performance: Only for Undemanding Projects

1080p: Comfortable in Older Games

- CS:GO — 90–120 FPS (low settings).

- Fortnite — 40–50 FPS (Low, 720p).

- GTA V — 35–45 FPS (medium settings).

1440p and 4K: Not Recommended

Even with FSR 1.0 (support for which is limited by drivers), resolutions above 1080p lead to FPS drops below 30. Ray tracing is absent in hardware, and software emulation is impractical due to CPU load.

4. Professional Tasks: Very Limited Niche

OpenCL and Rendering: Minimal Efficiency

The card supports OpenCL 1.2, allowing it to be used for basic tasks:

- Video editing in DaVinci Resolve (projects up to 1080p, without complex effects).

- Simple 3D models in Blender (rendering will take 5–10 times longer than on modern GPUs).

NVIDIA CUDA: An Alternative for Professionals

For comparison, even a budget NVIDIA GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR6) on CUDA shows 3–4 times better performance in rendering.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation: A Plus for Old PCs

TDP 95 W: Undemanding on Power

The card does not require a powerful PSU: a 350-400 W unit with a 6-pin connector is sufficient.

Cooling: Quiet but Weak System

The standard cooler handles the load (up to 75°C under stress), but overheating may occur in compact cases. A case with 1–2 intake fans is recommended.

6. Comparison with Competitors: The Budget Battle

Analogues from 2014-2016:

- NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti (2 GB GDDR5): Comparable in gaming, but wins due to driver optimization.

- AMD R7 370 (4 GB GDDR5): 20-30% more powerful but rarely found in new condition.

Modern Competitors in 2025:

- AMD Radeon RX 6400 (4 GB GDDR6, $120): 3–4 times faster, supports FSR 3.0 and RDNA 2.

- Intel Arc A310 (4 GB GDDR6, $100): Better in DX12 and streaming.

7. Practical Tips: Who is R7 250X Relevant For?

Power Supply: 400 W is sufficient (e.g., EVGA 400 W1).

Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x16, works on Intel 4th generation platforms and newer, AMD AM4.

Drivers: AMD officially ended support in 2023. Use the last available versions (Adrenalin 21.6.1) or community mods.

Important: The card does not support Windows 11 with TPM 2.0 enabled without patches.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($50–70 for new units in 2025).

- Energy efficiency.

- FreeSync support.

Cons:

- No support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3).

- Limited memory capacity.

- Absence of upscaling technologies (FSR 2.0/3.0).

9. Final Verdict: Who Should Consider the R7 250X?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Owners of Old PCs who want to upgrade without replacing the PSU.

2. Retro Gaming Enthusiasts (pre-2015).

3. Office Tasks and HD Video: Supports 4K decoding via HDMI 1.4a.

Alternative: If the budget allows for $100–150, it’s better to opt for a new Radeon RX 6400 or Intel Arc A310—they provide future-proofing.

Conclusion

The Radeon R7 250X in 2025 is a niche solution for very limited scenarios. It should only be considered as a temporary option or for specific tasks. Modern budget GPUs offer significantly more for a small additional cost.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

February 2014

Model Name

Radeon R7 250X

Generation

Volcanic Islands

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

1,500 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

1024MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1125MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

72.00 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

15.20 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

38.00 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

76.00 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.192 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

640

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

80W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

1.2

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_1)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

Shader Model

5.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.192 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 560 Ti OEM

1.238 +3.9%

Radeon E9174 MXM

1.223 +2.6%

Radeon R7 250X

1.192

GeForce GTX 850A

1.174 -1.5%

Quadro Plex 7000

1.152 -3.4%