GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, 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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 3136 (41%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 27 (11%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 will be 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be much (more or less 22%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (approximately 163%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (163%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.