GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 4033 (158%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 92800 (107%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (approximately 112%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42200 (112%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (more or less 98%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15800 (98%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the 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 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.