GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		40 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 257600 (4025%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 6478%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8300 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		1800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116600 (6478%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8300 GS (OEM)		900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28700 (3189%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.