GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be quite a bit (about 52%) better at AF 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 should be much (more or less 143%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.