Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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
Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
	Difference: 575 (8%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Geforce GTX 680		38 FPS
Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
	Difference: 1 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (31%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 71744 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a small bit (more or less 9%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a small bit (more or less 9%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (9%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.