GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which has a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses 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

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 270		5943 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 880 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 35008 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a bit (about 9%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (approximately 22%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (22%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the 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 - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.