GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, 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 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 5821 (75%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 173 (74%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 should in theory perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (approximately 61%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54528 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the Radeon HD 7950, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46464 (182%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.