GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 460		2557 points
	Difference: 3386 (132%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 92800 (107%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (more or less 90%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12600 (78%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.