GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 5327 (65%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980		63 FPS
Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
	Difference: 26 (70%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (more or less 22%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25728 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (approximately 143%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42464 (143%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.