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Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB comes with a GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB 200 Watts
Radeon HD 7970 250 Watts
Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 10% faster than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB 240000 MB/sec
Difference: 24000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (approximately 32%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB 89600 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 28800 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4000 (16%)

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

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Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7970

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 7950 3GB Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year January 2012 January 2012
Code Name Tahiti Pro Tahiti XT
Memory 3072 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 800 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 5000 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 200 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 240000 MB/sec 264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 89600 Mtexels/sec 118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 25600 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1792 2048
Texture Mapping Units 112 128
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 4313 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.1 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.2 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

7 Responses to “Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon HD 7970”
Ryan says:

currently the 7950 has more bang for the buck imo

Seth says:

Ryan this is true, but I have the 7970 Crossfire and it is amazing. Only issue that I have is sudden frame drops for a second or two when I am playing games like Far Cry 3 or Battlefield 3. Frame rate drops from 158 to 49 and for the 7950, I haven't heard of a such issue, but the clocking speeds of the 7950 are better as well.

bwooly1001 says:

They are working on fuzzing the frame stuttering issue as we speak. It should enable the cards to communicate better so they don't drop as many frames.

bwooly1001 says:

Fixing lol not fuzzing

hannes says:

What is best hd 7990 or 7970 in crossfire?

Rugged says:

The 7990 is like 2x 7950 on a single PCB vs 2x 7970 in CFX which means that the 7970s would be a better choice. but for price per preformance the 7990 would be the best deal.

GetJesse says:

That's not true Rugged. The 7990 has two 7970s on it, NOT two 7950s. The 7990 and 7970 x2 would be approximately equal to each other, depending on the particular brand's clock speeds.

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