GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which has core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

Radeon R9 270		5943 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 1603 (37%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 270 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (180%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a little bit (about 6%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4512 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16048 (126%)

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 past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

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