GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, 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 7950		7731 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 5834 (308%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 141504 (144%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is quite a bit (about 211%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (211%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (19%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.