GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270, which features a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 270 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44576 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is a lot (approximately 28%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3456 (12%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.