GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 67312 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (more or less 93%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38528 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (more or less 98%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15872 (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.