GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (460%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 69%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32640 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (170%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.