GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 67312 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be much (approximately 74%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30528 (74%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12672 (79%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.