GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a lot (more or less 138%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (about 233%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (233%)

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 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 its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.