GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (155%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be much (about 52%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24768 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (approximately 144%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16992 (144%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.