GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 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

Radeon HD 7950		7731 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 104 (1%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 81 (53%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7950 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (114%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit (more or less 24%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17472 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a lot (about 41%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10464 (41%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.