GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 4277 (65%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
	Difference: 85 (48%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (6%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be much (approximately 37%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (110%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.