GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It 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 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% faster 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 a lot (about 100%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.