GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1080		21942 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 13717 (167%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1080 should be 24% faster than the Radeon HD 7970 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 63680 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 is a lot (approximately 117%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 138720 (117%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 is quite a bit (more or less 247%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 73248 (247%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.