GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which comes with a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be a little bit superior to 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 should be a lot (approximately 71%) more effective 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 (approximately 17%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.