Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be much better than the Geforce GTX 680 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 47744 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit (approximately 44%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39168 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be much (about 26%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6592 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.