GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 295 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 16224 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is just a bit (about 3%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be much (about 26%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6656 (26%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.