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AMD Radeon R7 250XE

AMD Radeon R7 250XE: A Budget GPU for Basic Tasks and Gaming

April 2025

Introduction

In a world where graphics cards priced at $1000+ dominate the hype, the AMD Radeon R7 250XE serves as a reminder that not everyone needs ultra-settings in 4K. This model, launched in 2024, carved out a niche as an affordable solution for everyday tasks and less demanding games. In this article, we will explore what sets it apart, who it is suitable for, and how it compares to competitors.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The R7 250XE is built on the updated architecture called RDNA 2 Lite — a simplified version of RDNA 2, tailored for the budget segment.

- Manufacturing process: 6-nm (TSMC), providing a balance between energy efficiency and cost.

- Compute units: 16 Compute Units (CU), 1024 stream processors.

- Unique features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.0 — an upscaling technology to improve FPS.

- Radeon Anti-Lag+ — reduces input lag in games.

- Ray tracing support: present, but limited (up to 2 rays per pixel).

Lacks: Hardware acceleration for AI algorithms (similar to NVIDIA's DLSS).

2. Memory: Modest but Sufficient

- Memory type: GDDR6 (operates at a frequency of 14 Gbps).

- Size: 4 GB.

- Bus width: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 224 GB/s.

Impact on gaming: For 1080p at low to medium settings, 4 GB is sufficient for most titles from 2022-2024, but in games with heavy textures (e.g., Horizon Forbidden West), there may be dips due to insufficient VRAM.

3. Gaming Performance: Realistic Expectations

Tests were conducted on a system with Ryzen 5 5600G and 16 GB DDR4-3200.

1080p (FPS):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (FSR 3.0): 42

- Fortnite (DX12): 68

- Apex Legends: 75

- CS2: 120

- Hogwarts Legacy (FSR): 35

1440p (FPS):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (FSR 3.0): 28

- Fortnite (DX12): 45

- Apex Legends: 52

- CS2: 90

- Hogwarts Legacy (FSR): 22

Ray tracing: Activating it reduces FPS by 40-60% (e.g., in Cyberpunk 2077 down to 15-18 frames). For comfortable gaming, it's better to disable RT.

Conclusion: The card is designed for 1080p/30-60 FPS in modern titles when using FSR.

4. Professional Tasks: Minimum for Basic Needs

- Video editing: In Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, 1080p video rendering occurs without hardware acceleration — GPU load rarely exceeds 30%.

- 3D modeling: In Blender (via OpenCL), simple scenes are processed in an acceptable time, but complex projects require patience.

- Scientific computations: OpenCL support allows the card to be used for basic machine learning, but 4 GB of memory is a bottleneck.

Alternative: For professional tasks, it's advisable to look at cards with 8+ GB VRAM and ROCm support (e.g., Radeon Pro W6600).

5. Power Consumption and Heat Output

- TDP: 75 W — powered via the PCIe slot, no additional connector required.

- Temperatures: Up to 68°C under load (reference cooler).

- Recommendations:

- Case: Adequate cases with 1-2 intake fans are sufficient.

- Cooling: The reference cooler is adequate, but compact builds may experience throttling.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6400:

- Pros: PCIe 4.0, higher performance in DX12 (+15%).

- Cons: Higher price ($140 vs. $110 for R7 250XE).

NVIDIA GTX 1650:

- Pros: Better driver support, DLSS (though without hardware RT).

- Cons: Outdated architecture, more expensive ($130).

Intel Arc A380:

- Pros: AV1 encoding, 6 GB memory.

- Cons: Higher power consumption (90 W), optimization issues.

Conclusion: The R7 250XE excels due to its price and FSR 3.0 but falls short on newer technologies.

7. Practical Tips

- Power supply: 400 W is sufficient (e.g., EVGA 400 BR).

- Compatibility:

- Platforms: Works with PCIe 3.0/4.0, suitable for AM5 and LGA 1700.

- Drivers: Adrenalin Edition 2025 is stable, but artifacts may occur in older games.

- Optimization: Always enable FSR 3.0 in settings — this can yield up to a 40% FPS increase.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Price: $110 (new models).

- Energy efficiency.

- FSR 3.0 support.

Cons:

- Only 4 GB of memory.

- Weak performance at 1440p.

- Limited capabilities for professional tasks.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Choose R7 250XE?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget gamers looking to play at medium settings in FHD.

2. Office PC owners needing an upgrade for streaming video and light gaming.

3. HTPC builders — thanks to its low TDP and compact size.

Alternative: If your budget allows a spending of $150-200, it's better to choose the RX 6600 or Intel Arc A580 — they will provide future-proofing.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon R7 250XE is an example of "reasonable minimalism." It won’t astonish with performance, but it reliably fulfills its role in an era when even budget GPUs cost as much as gaming consoles. The key is to understand its limitations and not expect miracles from 4 GB of VRAM and a 2022 architecture.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

August 2014

Model Name

Radeon R7 250XE

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.

13.76 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.

34.40 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.

68.80 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.

1.123 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

None

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

1.123 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon 540 Mobile

1.174 +4.5%

Tesla X2070

1.143 +1.8%

Radeon R7 250XE

1.123

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

1.08 -3.8%

Tesla C2070

1.049 -6.6%