GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which has core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs 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

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 1689 (26%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 950		10 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (110%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 150% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 158272 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 141%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69248 (141%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (11%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in a second.

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