GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (460%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is quite a bit (about 52%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24640 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (about 143%) better at AA than the GeForce GTS 150, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16960 (143%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount 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 speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.