GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88320 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a little bit (more or less 15%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11904 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (approximately 128%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32672 (128%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.