GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 295 will be 25% quicker than the Radeon R9 270 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44576 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be quite a bit (approximately 28%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is superior to the Radeon R9 270, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3456 (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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.