GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which has a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M270X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 14272 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be a little bit (approximately 16%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3944 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 928 (8%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.