GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a small bit superior to 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 AF 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 (about 143%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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