GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, 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 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 3060 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7970 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104640 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a lot (more or less 25%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29440 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is a lot (more or less 114%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33760 (114%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.