GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 3136 (41%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 27 (11%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 is 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 22%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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.