GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 2642 (32%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		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 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a small bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37600 (127%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.