GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 270		5943 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 880 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 35008 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a little bit (about 9%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (22%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.