GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which has GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M270X should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is much (approximately 49%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14200 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be just a bit (more or less 7%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.