GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 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 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 4333 (228%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 55104 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (more or less 178%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (178%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (more or less 48%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (48%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.