Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1400 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 1707 (29%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Geforce GTX 680 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon R9 270 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is much (more or less 79%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56768 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3392 (12%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.