GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 37504 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (approximately 66%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31840 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12736 (66%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.