GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be much (about 90%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34200 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (about 33%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (33%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.