Radeon Instinct MI250 vs Polaris 21

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in performance rankingnot ratednot rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
ArchitectureGCN 4.0 (2016−2020)CDNA 2.0 (2021)
GPU code namePolaris 21Aldebaran
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release dateno data8 November 2021 (2 years ago)
Current price$90 $12340

Detailed specifications

General performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider their benchmark and gaming test results. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores102413312
Boost clock speedno data1700 MHz
Number of transistors3,000 million58,200 million
Manufacturing process technology14 nm6 nm
Power consumption (TDP)no data500 Watt
Texture fill rateno data1,414

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interfaceno dataPCIe 4.0 x16
Lengthno data267 mm
Widthno data2-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno data2x 8-pin

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeno dataHBM2e
Maximum RAM amountno data128 GB
Memory bus widthno data8192 Bit
Memory clock speedno data3.2 GB/s
Memory bandwidthno data3,277 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectorsno dataNo outputs

API compatibility

List of supported graphics and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12 (12_0)N/A
Shader Model6.7N/A
OpenGL4.6N/A
OpenCL2.13.0
Vulkan1.3N/A

Pros & cons summary


Chip lithography 14 nm 6 nm

We couldn't decide between Polaris 21 and Radeon Instinct MI250. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Polaris 21
Polaris 21
AMD Radeon Instinct MI250
Radeon Instinct MI250

Comparisons with similar GPUs

We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.

Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


4.1 9 votes

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3.3 18 votes

Rate Radeon Instinct MI250 on a scale of 1 to 5:

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Questions & comments

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