Radeon HD 7770 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon HD 7770		3180 points
	Difference: 5045 (159%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 192000 (267%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (more or less 196%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78400 (196%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (about 85%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (85%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.