GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 47616 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be a lot (about 81%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40192 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be quite a bit (about 45%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11456 (45%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.