GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which has a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 4924 (83%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 270 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37200 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (133%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.