GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 295 will be 25% faster than the Radeon R9 270X overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44576 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be a little bit (more or less 15%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 256 (1%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.