GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 47616 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 81%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40192 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11456 (45%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.