GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 4277 (65%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
	Difference: 85 (48%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (6%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 37%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (37%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (110%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.