Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 3844 (88%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (50%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (approximately 92%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (more or less 68%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 260X, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (68%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 rate also depends on quite a few 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.