Compare any two graphics cards:

Geforce GTX 770 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

The Geforce GTX 770 comes with a GPU clock speed of 1046 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1753 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 770		230 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform just a bit faster than the Geforce GTX 770 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 770		224384 MB/sec
	Difference: 39616 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 770 will be just a bit (more or less 13%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Geforce GTX 770		133888 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15488 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 770 is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 770		33472 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (13%)

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

Geforce GTX 770

Amazon.com

Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Model	Geforce GTX 770	Radeon HD 7970
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	May 2013	January 2012
Code Name	GK104	Tahiti XT
Fab Process	28 nm	28 nm
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory	2048 MB	3072 MB
Core Speed	1046 MHz	925 MHz
Shader Speed	1046 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1753 MHz (7012 MHz effective)	1375 MHz (5500 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	1536	2048
Texture Mapping Units	128	128
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	384-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11.0	DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.3	OpenGL 4.2
Power (Max TDP)	230 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	224384 MB/sec	264000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	133888 Mtexels/sec	118400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	33472 Mpixels/sec	29600 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Comments

5 Responses to “Geforce GTX 770 vs Radeon HD 7970”

Blub says:

August 12, 2013 at 1:44 pm

which card is better a msi r7970 lightning or evga 770 titan cooled ?
becouse i have a r7970 lightning.. :S

Scott says:

August 15, 2013 at 10:38 am

Depends, For video editing yes for most games, No. AMD Cards are better for Video editing and better at some games but Nividia is better for gaming, especially on the really popular games, BF3,Far Cry 3 ect... Those cards are pretty close though. The Asus 7970 ROG Matrix is better than the Lightning because of it's better cooling and heat dissipation. The 7970 ROG Matrix is also clocked to 316 GB/s and is much quieter and cooler than reference and lightning 7970's.