GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M270X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120384 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (about 70%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20408 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25456 (219%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface 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 bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.