GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 will be 211% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (211%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (more or less 114%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (114%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (200%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.