GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 270, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 270 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be much (about 46%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22592 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon R9 270, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8256 (29%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number 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 number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 maximum fill rate.