GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is 88% faster than the GeForce GTX 880M overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (88%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be quite a bit (more or less 36%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32512 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4928 (19%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.