GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M270X should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be quite a bit (approximately 164%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47512 (164%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1152 (10%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.