GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 37504 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23840 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (approximately 50%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9536 (50%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.