GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M270X, which comes with a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (approximately 70%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (approximately 219%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.