GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 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

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than 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 quite a bit (approximately 178%) faster with regards to AF 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.