GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 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 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		6013 points
	Difference: 217 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be much (about 28%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22480 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10040 (46%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.