Compare any two graphics cards:

Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

The Geforce GTX 680 has core speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 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

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 270 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a lot (approximately 79%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, but only just. (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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Geforce GTX 680

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 270

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model	Geforce GTX 680	Radeon R9 270
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	March 2012	November 2013
Code Name	GK104	Curacao Pro
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	1006 MHz	900 MHz
Memory Speed	6008 MHz	5600 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	195 watts	150 watts
Bandwidth	192256 MB/sec	179200 MB/sec
Texel Rate	128768 Mtexels/sec	72000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	32192 Mpixels/sec	28800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	1536	1280
Texture Mapping Units	128	80
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	3540 million	2800 million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 11.0	DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.2	OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices