Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate Video Card Review

System Overview & Testing Procedures
Like any graphics card you just slide the R7 250 Ultimate into an open PCI-Express slot, connect your power and you are good to go.

Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate

This is the system we will be using to test the Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate.

Processor: Intel Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
Video Card: Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate
Memory: 16GB Kingston 10th Anniversary
Power: Cooler Master V850
Storage: 750GB SATA Drive
Cooling: DeepCool Lucifer
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II with 5 fans

As always we’re first going to verify our numbers and make sure we’re accurately reporting the performance specification of the card. Here’s a GPU-Z screenshot, listing all the information. As you can see GPU-Z actually recognizes this card as a HD 7700 series card as it is based on the “Cape Verde” GPU. The card is running with a core clock of 800 MHz and the memory at 1125 MHz (4.5 GHz effective).

info

For our tests we will be comparing the Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate to a few other graphics cards we have on hand. They are listed below along with their core, boost and memory speeds

Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate: 800 MHz / 800 MHz / 4500 MHz
ASUS R9 270X DirectCU II TOP: 1050 MHz / 1120 MHz / 5600 MHz
ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP: 970 MHz / 1070 MHz / 6400 MHz
EVGA GTX 680: 1006 MHz / 1058 MHz / 6000 MHz
Gigabyte R9 280X OC: 1000 MHz / 1100 MHz / 6000 MHz
MSI GTX 770 Gaming: 1059 MHz / 1111 MHz / 7010 MHz
MSI Radeon R9 270 Gaming: 900 MHz / 975 MHz / 5600 MHz
Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X: 850 MHz / 950 MHz / 5000 MHz
Sapphire R9 280X Toxic: 1100 MHz / 1150 MHz / 6400 MHz

Unfortunately we do not have a reference or any other R7 250 cards on hand. Keep in mind all of these other cards cost much more and are more geared towards gaming.

Benchmarking Information
When we cover graphics cards, we always run the same benchmarking suites and then a selection of the most popular and hardware intensive games available. I have separated our tests into 2 different sections (Benchmarks & Games) and you can see them listed below.

Benchmarks
3DMark – Fire Strike
3DMark 11
Heaven Benchmark

Games
Alien vs Predator
Battlefield 4
Sleeping Dogs
Max Payne 3

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