GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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.

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
GeForce GTX 580		25 FPS
	Difference: 12 (48%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 3269 (66%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 71616 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 140%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68992 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7456 (25%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.