GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M270X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (61%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is a little bit (approximately 16%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4600 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M270X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (21%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.