GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (approximately 22%) more effective at texture filtering 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 should be quite a bit (more or less 163%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7950, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.