Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1625 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 3844 (88%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (50%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 154% faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (more or less 92%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (68%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.