GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised 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 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 67312 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit (about 74%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30528 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (more or less 79%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.