GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be much (more or less 112%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42200 (112%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (48%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.