GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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

Radeon R9 270		5943 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 1603 (37%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (180%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be just a bit (approximately 6%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4512 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16048 (126%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.