GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		229 Sol/s
	Difference: 179 (78%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (approximately 61%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54528 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46464 (182%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.