Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which features a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 380 4G in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (32%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G will be quite a bit (about 21%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19040 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (21%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.