GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 will be 24% faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a bit (more or less 9%) faster with regards to AF 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 should be a lot (more or less 22%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 660, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.