GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be 60% faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 67312 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (about 93%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38528 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be much (more or less 98%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15872 (98%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.