GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 8352 (161%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (54%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
	Difference: 237 (139%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 should be 46% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (about 162%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89088 (162%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (more or less 162%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7850, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44544 (162%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.