GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be 25% faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 47616 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be much (about 81%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40192 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11456 (45%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.