GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a core clock frequency 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 features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 295 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 40224 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 28%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26240 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (9%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 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 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.