GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		229 Sol/s
	Difference: 179 (78%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 61%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54528 (61%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (approximately 182%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46464 (182%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.