GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		229 Sol/s
	Difference: 33 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (more or less 22%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (approximately 163%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (163%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.