GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 90 (1%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be much better than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 149120 (83%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a bit (approximately 3%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2304 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is a lot (approximately 82%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26272 (82%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.