GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 37504 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31840 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12736 (66%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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