GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, 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 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is 7% quicker than the GeForce GTX 295 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be a small bit (about 3%) better at texture filtering 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 will be a lot (approximately 26%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed per second.

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