GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which has core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

GeForce GTX 1060		12359 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 4134 (50%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 34% quicker than the GeForce GTX 1060 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 67392 (34%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be a bit (about 2%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42688 (144%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.