GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 4575 (125%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 86592 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (approximately 182%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76400 (182%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (14%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.