GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 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

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 598 (8%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 152000 (136%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (about 64%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46272 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is much (approximately 22%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7970, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (22%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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.