GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, 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		244 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be 25% faster than the GeForce GTX 580 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be quite a bit (more or less 81%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.