GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 960		7627 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 1684 (28%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (36%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 will be 60% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a bit (approximately 0%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7264 (25%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.