GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 980		13552 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 5327 (65%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980		63 FPS
Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
	Difference: 26 (70%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (about 22%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25728 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42464 (143%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 maximum fill rate.