GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which has a core clock speed 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 comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 37504 (26%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (about 50%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23840 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9536 (50%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.