GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7990, which features a clock frequency of 950 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 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 7990		15520 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 4653 (43%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7990		513 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 251 (96%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7990		32 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (68%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 352000 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be quite a bit (more or less 123%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134000 (123%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.