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GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 has core speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which features GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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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

The Radeon HD 7970, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (about 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

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (approximately 84%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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

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GeForce GTX 260

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 260 Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year June 16, 2008 January 2012
Code Name G200 Tahiti XT
Memory 896 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 576 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 1998 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 182 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 111888 MB/sec 264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 36864 Mtexels/sec 118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16128 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 192 2048
Texture Mapping Units 64 128
Render Output Units 28 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 448-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1400 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 260

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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