GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (211%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (more or less 138%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (about 233%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (233%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.