GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7950 should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 295 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 16224 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be a little bit (approximately 3%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6656 (26%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.