GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 64 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 270X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 13184 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (about 62%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30592 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5056 (16%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.