GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 will be 650% faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be much (more or less 89%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42240 (89%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (approximately 116%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (116%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.