GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 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 will be a lot (approximately 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 much (approximately 143%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and should be capable of handling higher 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 max fill rate.