GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which has core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 232000 (725%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (approximately 150%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71040 (150%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (about 150%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (150%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.