GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 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)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 136% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 152112 (136%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (approximately 221%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81536 (221%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13472 (84%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.