Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480, which features a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon HD 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 5618 (73%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 45 (19%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (29%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 480 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon HD 7950 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be a lot (more or less 80%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71680 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is quite a bit (about 40%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (40%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.