GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 980M		9476 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 1251 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136000 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a little bit (about 19%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18752 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36832 (124%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.