GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 2293 (63%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270 should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 1792 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a lot (about 71%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30000 (71%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a bit (more or less 17%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (17%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.