PowerColor Radeon R7 250X 1GB Video Card Review
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The PowerColor AXR7 250X 1GBD5-HE graphics card is a decent little card, but overall it failed to impress. This has nothing to do with PowerColor though as they released a nice Radeon R7 250X video card. The problem here is that the AMD Radeon R7 250X entered into a very crowded market where if you spend an extra $10 or $20 you can get rather large performance gains. The PowerColor AXR7 250X 1GBD5-HE costs $99.99 plus $5.39 shipping ($105.38 total) and therein lies the problem. Right now you can go out and get the MSI Radeon R7 260 1GB OC card for $89.99 shipped after rebate. The AMD Radeon R7 260 uses the newer and more powerful Bonaire GPU that also features AMD TrueAudio technology. How could we ever suggest getting a Radeon R7 250X 1GB card for $105 when you there are better AMD options out there? Even without the rebate there is a $4 price difference between the cards and we’d still suggest going with the 260 versus the 250X. The really sad news is that the PowerColor AXR7 250X 1GBD5-HE graphics card lowest priced AMD Radeon R7 250X video card on Newegg and Amazon at this very second.
Right now Newegg has five Radeon R7 250X cards for sale; four are 1GB cards between $99.99 to $119.99 and then there is an ASUS R7250X-2GD5 model with 2GB of memory for a whopping $134.99. These prices are pretty messed up. If you had $135 to spend forget the AMD Radeon R7 250X. If you wanted to stay with AMD for $129.99 plus $5.39 shipping (after rebate) you can get the Sapphire Radeon R7 260X 2GB video card. There is a huge performance gap between these cards if you go back and look at the benchmarks, but there is hardly any difference right now in price. Just be sure to search around for the best deal if you when you go to spend your hard earned money as there are a ton of choices. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 is also a solid card and some models like the MSI Gaming N750 TF 1GD5/OC are already down to $109.99 shipped after rebate. And if you really want your mind blown…. You can pick up ‘old’ AMD Radeon HD 7770 GHz edition cards for $74.99 shipped after rebate. Keep in mind the AMD Radeon R7 250X is a rebadged AMD Radeon HD 7770 GHz edition card! The Radeon HD 7770 GHz edition cards are no longer being made and will soon be cleared out, but there are great deals to be had right now with current promotions. If you need help finding one we are just an e-mail or forum post away!
The number of choices you have between $90-$130 is overwhelming, but if you are a gamer we suggest that you save up and invest in a Radeon R7 260X on the AMD side or the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 (the first Maxwell GPU powered card by NVIDIA) as they offer substantial performance gains and are based on newer GPU architectures.
Legit Bottom Line: The AMD Radeon R7 250X 1GB video card is a decent little card, but at $99 plus shipping there are better choices for gamers out there if you look.