CDNA 2
AMD Instinct MI250X
wins
1
The AMD Instinct MI250X is AMD's CDNA 2 data center GPU.
CDNA 3
AMD Instinct MI300X
wins
4
The AMD MI300X leads all GPUs on memory capacity (192GB HBM3) and bandwidth (5.3 TB/s), making it exceptional for serving very large language models that don't fit on H100.
Performance comparison
Visual bars — winner highlighted
AMD Instinct MI250X
Metric
AMD Instinct MI300X
FP16 TFLOPS
Bandwidth
VRAM
TDP (lower=better)
TFLOPS/watt
GB/s per watt
Full specification table
| Spec | AMD Instinct MI250X | AMD Instinct MI300X |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | CDNA 2 | CDNA 3 |
| VRAM | 128 GB HBM2e | 192 GB HBM3 |
| VRAM type | HBM2e | HBM3 |
| Memory bandwidth | 3,277 GB/s | 5,300 GB/s |
| FP16 TFLOPS | 383 TFLOPS | 1,307 TFLOPS |
| TDP | 560 W | 750 W |
| TFLOPS/watt | 0.68 T/W | 1.74 T/W |
| GB/s per watt | 5.85 GB/s/W | 7.07 GB/s/W |
| NVLink | No | No |
| Release year | 2021 | 2023 |
Live cloud pricing
On-demand pricing across providers — updated in real time
AMD Instinct MI250X
No live pricing data available.
AMD Instinct MI300X
Power efficiency analysis
TFLOPS/watt and GB/s/watt — critical for data center TCO
AMD Instinct MI250X
AMD Instinct MI300X
TFLOPS/watt measures compute efficiency — how much AI throughput you get per watt of power consumed. For data centers with PUE of 1.2–1.5, a 10% improvement in TFLOPS/watt translates directly to lower electricity costs and cooling requirements. GB/s/watt measures memory bandwidth efficiency, which is the binding constraint for memory-bound LLM inference workloads.
Performance-per-dollar
TFLOPS/$ and GB/s/$ at current best cloud prices
AMD Instinct MI250X
AMD Instinct MI300X
TFLOPS/$ = FP16 TFLOPS ÷ best on-demand $/hr. Higher is better — more compute per dollar. GB/s/$ = memory bandwidth ÷ best on-demand $/hr. For memory-bound inference workloads (most LLM serving), GB/s/$ is often a better predictor of cost-efficiency than TFLOPS/$. Prices are live from the Compute Comparison API and update in real time.
Workload Cost Comparison
Total job cost = best on-demand $/hr × GPU count × hours
| Workload | Scale | AMD Instinct MI250X | AMD Instinct MI300X |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7B LLM fine-tune | 8× GPU, 24 h | — | $355 |
| 70B LLM fine-tune | 64× GPU, 72 h | — | $8.5k |
| Inference server | 1× GPU, 730 h | — | $1.4k |
| Image gen batch | 4× GPU, 8 h | — | $59 |
Based on current best on-demand prices. Spot pricing typically 40–70% lower. Actual cost depends on provider, region, and availability.
When to choose each GPU
Choose AMD Instinct MI250X for:
- HPC workloads
- Large model inference
- AMD ROCm deployments
Weaknesses / Limitations
- Older CDNA 2 architecture — lower FP16 TFLOPS than MI300X or H100
- ROCm software ecosystem less mature than CUDA
- 560W TDP — high power draw for its performance tier
Choose AMD Instinct MI300X for:
- Memory-bound LLM inference
- Large model serving
- HPC
Weaknesses / Limitations
- ROCm software ecosystem is less mature than CUDA — some frameworks require extra porting effort
- Fewer cloud providers offer MI300X compared to H100
- 750W TDP — high power draw comparable to H100 SXM
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