GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (approximately 117%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43136 (117%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 98%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.