GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units 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.

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 3960 (48%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 67392 (34%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be just a bit (about 9%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9968 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.