GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 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

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 6328 (334%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 165504 (168%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 311%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89600 (311%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (37%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.