GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (155%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be quite a bit (approximately 69%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32768 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is superior to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20192 (171%)

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 past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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