GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a lot (about 143%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52736 (143%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be much (more or less 59%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed in one second. This figure 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 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.