GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units 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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 6962 (106%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
	Difference: 231 (131%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (more or less 80%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40064 (125%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.