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 clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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, in theory, should 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 will be a lot (about 61%) more effective at anisotropic 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

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (more or less 182%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.