Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 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
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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform a lot faster 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 will be just a bit (more or less 9%) more effective at anisotropic 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 (about 9%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.