GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 is 54% quicker than the Radeon HD 7950 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128640 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be quite a bit (more or less 65%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58240 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37760 (148%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.