GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be 58% quicker than the GeForce GTX 570 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (58%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be quite a bit (about 104%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45680 (104%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (14%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.