GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7950 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (more or less 81%) better at texture filtering 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 should be a lot (more or less 45%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.