GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 67312 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (more or less 93%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38528 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (about 98%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.