GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M270X will be 13% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be much (approximately 164%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is just a bit (about 10%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.