GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 270X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (more or less 37%) better at texture filtering 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 high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, and very much so. (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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.