Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has core 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144512 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is quite a bit (approximately 161%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 144640 (161%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is quite a bit (about 129%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32960 (129%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.