GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 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 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

The Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically perform a bit faster 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 will be quite a bit (more or less 22%) faster with regards to 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 will be much (more or less 143%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also should be able to handle higher 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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.