GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which has core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 980		13552 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 7609 (128%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 should be 25% quicker than the Radeon R9 270 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (approximately 100%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72128 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be a lot (more or less 150%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43264 (150%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.