GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 2642 (32%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be just a bit (about 8%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 127%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37600 (127%)

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 over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 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 a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.