GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 598 (8%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		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 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152000 (136%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (about 64%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46272 (64%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (22%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

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