GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		229 Sol/s
	Difference: 33 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (more or less 22%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (about 163%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (163%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.