GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which features core clock speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 8352 (161%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (54%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
	Difference: 237 (139%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 162%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89088 (162%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44544 (162%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of 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 better 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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