GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 112992 (89%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be a lot (approximately 77%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38960 (77%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7876 (44%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.