GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 M270X in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 31680 (44%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is quite a bit (about 35%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10168 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3088 (27%)

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. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.