GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 128112 (115%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be much (approximately 116%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48128 (116%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9472 (59%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.